


Beautiful Mess

by Mazauric



Series: Sleeper Series [3]
Category: KAT-TUN (Band)
Genre: Jin actually knows what subspace is, Jin has the best job in the world, Kame has interesting ways of falling asleep, Kame works too hard, Kame works with dead people, M/M, Serial Killer, Sliiiight Ueda cameo (if you squint), Subspace
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-07
Updated: 2020-07-07
Packaged: 2021-03-04 18:14:55
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 1
Words: 32,433
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25130716
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Mazauric/pseuds/Mazauric
Summary: The sleep center, a new place where people can sleep in the arms of strangers. When Kame finds sleep impossible, he finds his rest in the arms of Jin.But a serial killer in Tokyo puts everyone on edge and the more bodies pile up, the more Kame finds himself tangled in a web that'll pull both him and Jin.Goodnight, sleep tight and may you find rest in the sleep center.
Relationships: Akanishi Jin/Kamenashi Kazuya
Series: Sleeper Series [3]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1558072
Comments: 2
Kudos: 21





	Beautiful Mess

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_触らぬ神に祟りなし_

_Let sleeping dogs lie._   
  
**Sleep Center Rules and Regulations**

  
  
_Welcome to the Sleep Center - Tokyo Division. A safe haven where customers are welcome to sleep in a safe, comforting environment. To ensure both customer and sleeper are safe and secure for the duration of the sleeping period, please adhere to the following rules and regulations before entering the sleeping area._

  1. _All customers must change into sleep clothes before entering the sleeping room. Items are not permitted into the room including electronic devices, food or drink. (Exceptions made for those with sleep aids)_
  2. _There are security cameras in each room with 24 hour monitoring. This is to keep both customers and sleepers safe._
  3. _No sexual activity of any kind with the sleepers._
  4. _Customers are free to use the bathroom facilities at any point in the sleep period._
  5. _With the permission of the sleeper, customers are free to snuggle, curl up or touch the sleeper within limits if necessary for sleep and comfort purposes._
  6. _Sexual activity with other customers is also prohibited._
  7. _Please alert reception if you suffer from sleepwalking or night terrors as there are special sleepers available._
  8. _Customers are free to choose another sleeper at any point in the sleep period if their chosen sleeper does not help the sleeping process._
  9. _Exchanging personal information is at the discretion of the sleeper._



  
_Good night, sleep tight and may you find rest in the Sleep Center._  
  
 _Sign: ______________________________________________________  
  
 _Date: ______________________________________________________   
  
\-   
  
At the moment of death, everything in the body stops. As logical as that is, what most people fail to realise is just what stops, exactly.   
  
The heart stops, the skin tightens and discolouration begins. All the muscles, with no life left, relax and that means the bladder and bowels empty as well. If left alone, the body goes into rigor mortis and decomposition means the scent of rotten meat starts faint and gets stronger by the second. Fluids leak from every single orifice available, natural gasses of the body leave blisters on the rubbery skin.   
  
It’s a grotesque sight and for the likes of Kamenashi Kazuya, it’s something he sees more often than he can count.   
  
On a Sunday night, around 7pm, the body he’s looking at has been left alone for a whole day in a room where the aircon had been left on high heat for a full day and night. Blood has long since stained the floors along with the decomposition of the body. Filtered deep into the carpet, staining the wooden flooring underneath.   
  
“There’s not much of him left,” he comments as he leans down and tries to ignore the smell.   
  
The victim is lying face down, his shirt has been torn off and is lying in a heap near the door. His back has been carved. Hacked at with a fine blade and carved into it are multiple words in various angles - as though the killer just went around him and had at it from all sides.   
  
_‘NOT ENOUGH’_  
  
 _‘SLUT’_  
  
 _‘WORTHLESS’_  
  
 _‘USELESS’_  
  
 _‘HOPELESS’_  
  
 _‘WHORE’_  
  
 _‘LOOSE’_  
  
 _‘TRASH’_   
  
He’s a hoarder, if the state of his apartment is anything to go by. At some point, his apartment would have smelt ten times worse than he did. As it is, the scent of his corpse mixed with whatever the hell he stuffed in this one room apartment was enough to make the officers gag when they first arrived.   
  
Kazuya looks over the body, studying the signs. The skin has long since turned a putrid green and purple, rigor mortis has long since set in and the space on the floor around the body is rotting with it. The smell cannot be described and in his line of work, Kazuya has become well aware of what a dead body smells like but it’s not a scent one can ever get used to.   
  
“So?” the detective standing behind him asks, his arm over his nose. “What’s the deal with this guy? Our murderer really wasn’t kind with him...working man?”   
  
“Obviously he was murdered,” Kazuya mutters, his eyes scanning over the carved words and the stain of blood in the carpet. “He’s been left alone approximately 24 hours so decomposition has already started, I need to move him to my lab for a more definitive analysis. If he’s a working guy, maybe we have semen to trace it back to the murderer.”   
  
He doubts he’d be that lucky. A moron would leave traces on the victim and although this crime is definitely messy and a crime of passion, it doesn’t speak to idiocy yet.   
  
The detective checks the refrigerator and hums as he looks around the room. The apartment is a mess, this man hoarded everything. Rubbish, rotten food scraps and plastic covers the floor so much that Kazuya can’t even see the flooring. There’s a desk with a computer, it too, covered in trash. Forensics don’t want to mess up the area for detectives but it’s hard to work without moving something.   
  
“Looks to me like our murderer bought him and wasn’t satisfied? A smart prostitute wouldn’t bring their client back to this dump,” another policeman shrugs and Kazuya can detect a tone of disdain in his voice. It doesn’t surprise him, these men are meant to protect the public but a lot of them have their own biases - especially towards male prostitutes.   
  
Funny how a lot of these officers jumped at the chance to case a murder scene but upon learning their victim is a male prostitute, they’re suddenly not interested. Like fussy toddlers who want the shiny toy - at least, that’s how Kazuya has to see them. Aside from the marks on his back, there isn’t even any conclusive evidence that he is a prostitute but most of the officers wouldn’t need convincing, they make up their minds pretty fast and like stubborn mules, it’s hard to change them.   
  
Kazuya finally stands up and turns to the main detective.   
  
“I’ll prepare a full autopsy back in my lab, a report will be emailed to you afterwards. Was there anything else you wanted me to check, detective?”   
  
“Aside from possible marks that might give us any hint as to who did this but I don’t need to tell you how to do your job, Kame,” the man says. He’s holding the cell phone belonging to the deceased and checking over his messages. “No friends, no family, no one came and checked on this guy...his body’s gonna tell you the tale of a man who probably made the wrong enemy.”   
  
Kazuya nods and reaches for his bag. He takes another look at the body and shakes his head. The man had wounds on his arms and hands, most likely from trying to defend himself. Kazuya doesn’t know what that level of hate feels like and he doesn’t want to know.   
  
“Hey.”   
  
He looks up, the detective is eyeing him, sharp olive eyes watching the lines and contours of Kazuya’s face for the slightest sign of distress.   
  
“You alright?”   
  
Kazuya nods. He has to be. He’s been in this line of work far too long to be disturbed by a rotting body with marks on it. And yet here he is and he is disturbed. He’s always disturbed. The detective gives him a long, evaluating look as Kazuya makes his way towards the door.   
  
“Kame.”   
  
Kazuya turns around to look at the detective. It’s only a moment that they exchange a look, not long enough for the other officers in the room to notice the significance but long enough for Kazuya to get the message. He turns around and heads out, glad to be away from the smell.   
  
But the truth of it is, he could walk miles away, he could take a plane and go to another country and that smell would follow him. One thing he has learnt: once you know what a rotting corpse smells like, you never forget the scent.   
  
\-   
  
It’s very late at night when Kazuya finally pulls the white sheet over the body. He tugs the latex gloves off his hands and puts them into the bin. He makes one more note on his clipboard, signing off his name and sending the report out.   
  
Along with the scent of death and decay, another scent that sticks to Kazuya’s skin is the over polished, sterile scent that permeates from his white tile floors. It’s the same scent found in hospitals and in some ways, it’s worse than the corpses.   
  
With scent being one of the strongest triggers for memories, the scent of decay and rot only reminds Kazuya of work. It’s the scent of the over-sanitized walls that bring back so much more memories. Things he’d rather forget.   
  
He checks his phone and calls a familiar number as he heads out of his laboratory and locks it behind him.   
  
“ _I’ll be there in ten_ ,” the voice on the other end says as soon as he picks up.   
  
“Be there in thirty,” Kazuya requests softly as he pulls his coat over his shoulders. “I need to pick up some food on my way home first. I’m starving.”   
  
He hits Seven Eleven on the way home and when he’s perusing through the aisles, trying to find a bento box that looks even mildly appetizing, he overhears a conversation at the counter.   
  
“...and what are you planning on doing with eighteen red bulls?”   
  
“Drink them of course.”   
  
“Not all in one night, I hope!”   
  
“Of course.”   
  
Kazuya turns to glance at the counter where he can see the young woman behind the till, gaping at the impressive stack of energy drinks. The customer has a mop of silky black hair and is leaning against the till on his elbows. Kazuya can only see the back of his head from where he is.   
  
“Jin,” the woman continues as Kazuya continues looking over the food. “If you drink all of those, you’re going to die and I’m going to be held responsible for it. Be reasonable, no one needs to drink that much.”   
  
“Well, my new part time job means there’s a chance I won’t be able to stay up all night,” the customer, Jin, has a tease in his voice. As though he’s flirting with the girl. “You don’t want me to get fired from my job on the first day, do you?”   
  
The girl gives him a resigned look and starts packing the energy cans into a bag. “After I went through all the trouble of finding your last jobs? No thank you. But it’s the sleep clinic. The point is that you sleep.”   
  
“The point is that I help other people sleep. If they don’t sleep, I’m not allowed.”   
  
Kazuya finally settles on a teriyaki bento box and goes to stand behind Jin patiently. By now, the girl has packed all the drinks and is adding the money Jin left on the counter.   
  
“If you get fired from this one, I’m not helping you find another job,” the girl warns. “Also, you’re 500 yen short.”   
  
Kazuya sighs. He just wants to go home but as he watches Jin ruffling through his pockets and bag, he feels the edges of irritation pulling at his patience.   
  
“I’m not spotting you again, I’ll get fired,” the girl behind the counter snaps when Jin looks at her.   
  
By the time Jin turns around, Kazuya already has 500 yen in his hand and is holding it out to him.   
  
Jin’s face lights up and for a moment, Kazuya can’t remember what he’s so irritated about. From the back, Jin’s hair had almost convinced Kazuya he was dealing with a homeless guy but his face puts all doubts to shame. That’s not the face of someone who’s been living rough, it’s the kind of face that makes people extremely self-conscious, makes people look twice on the street.   
  
He’s absolutely beautiful.   
  
“Thanks!” he chirps, taking the money from Kazuya and handing it straight to the girl who gives him a pointed look.   
  
“You’ve reached a new low if you’re accepting money from complete strangers, give it back,” she demands.   
  
“No way!” Jin whines. “Besides, he-”   
  
“Can we hurry this up so I can go home?” Kazuya cuts in. “Please? Listening to you two is giving me a crippling headache.”   
  
For a moment, the two look like they don’t know how to respond but the girl moves first. She puts the money in the till and hands Jin the receipt.   
  
“You should get going,” she advises. “If you’re fired for being late, I’m not helping you.”   
  
“Yes you are,” Jin teases. He takes his bag and turns around to smile at Kazuya again. “Thanks for your help, what’s your name?”   
  
Kazuya hardly sees the point in telling him, considering they’re going to meet again, but he’s too tired.   
  
“Kame.”   
  
“Well, Kame, thanks for your help,” Jin nods and skips out the doors.   
  
The girl behind the counter shakes her head and turns to Kazuya. “Sorry to keep you waiting.”   
  
When Kazuya enters his apartment, he heats up his food and devours it faster than he can taste it. Not that he really wants to anyway, his appetite died the second he entered the room of that recluse and detected the scent of rotten meat. Despite the fact that he’d spent a good minute trying to find something that looked appetizing, food at this point is really just for sustenance.   
  
It’s not long after he’s finished his meal that a knock on his front door drags him up to his feet. When he opens the door, it’s the sight of the detective that relaxes him.   
  
“Hello, Hiroto.”   
  
It’s nearly three in the morning when Kazuya rolls over in bed and stretches out his limbs. His body finally feels relaxed, spent after a thoroughly long session in which Hiroto worked every ounce of his muscles and vocal cords. Fucking him within an inch of his life and making him scream until his voice ran dry.   
  
Beside him, Hiroto turns his head to watch him.   
  
“If you’re still awake, I’m not doing my job properly,” he tells him. “Either that, or I’m having an off day and we need to roll you onto your stomach.”   
  
“Let me breathe,” Kazuya breathes, a tired grin stretching his lips. “Surprised you’re still awake, I made you stand for half of that.”   
  
“Perks of the job,” Hiroto teases, a small groan coming from his lips as he stretches and Kazuya glances tiredly at the hard line of his abdomen. Hiroto is a little taller than him, toned perfectly with not an ounce of fat to him.   
  
He’s also not bad on the eyes either. Dark eyes, a short crop of brown hair atop his head and a smirk that both makes Kazuya weak at the knees and annoyed, usually because it means Hiroto can see right through him.   
  
They’ve been doing this for awhile. With their jobs crossing over every now and then, an easy relationship built with time and copious amounts of alcohol. Hiroto wasn’t looking for commitment and neither was Kazuya, it was - at its core - just sex.   
  
Kazuya couldn’t sleep most nights. Nightmares of corpses, of dead bodies and sterile hospital walls tinged with the bitter scent of illness made it impossible. They soon found that Hiroto fucking him into a coma was what helped him get even a few hours decent sleep.   
  
It wasn’t perfect of course, Kazuya never slept a full night because he had to fuck to get there but it was better than nothing.   
  
His fingers itch for a cigarette and he groans. He has a house rule not to smoke inside but sometimes - like now when his legs are jelly anyway - it’s so hard to resist. It takes all his strength to push himself up. He throws on a robe, snatches his packet from the bedside table and heads to the balcony doors where he comes out into the chilly air and leans against the railing.   
  
As he lights one between his lips, he looks over the silent view of Monzen-Nakacho ahead of him. The nicotine helps too, rushing through his lungs, calming him with the cool air of night. Thirteen floors below, the city is quiet too, only the occasional passing of a car this late at night. The air rushes through his hair, making him shiver as he takes more drags from the cigarette between his fingers.   
  
This won’t work in the long run. Kazuya is well aware of that. Hiroto is the kind of guy who will one day probably get married, get promoted and he’s not going to sneak around with an insomniac forensic pathologist once that happens. Not that Kazuya would really mind, none of this is personal, but he would have to find another way to sleep.   
  
Arms wind around him from behind and Kazuya keeps his eyes on the city even as he feels Hiroto’s hands sliding the back of his robe up. He leans forward, knees bending a little and feels his breath escape his lungs as Hiroto slides into him and lets the robe fall to where they’re joined.   
  
“Kame-chan,” Hiroto breathes into his ear, he presses against his back and starts thrusting slowly - just slow enough to drive Kazuya crazy. “How many times do I need to tell you to get out of your head? Stop thinking so much.”   
  
“Spoken like a true…” Kazuya moans and flicks his cigarette away so he can grip the railing. “Ugh, true hard boiled detective. You’re fucking a pathologist, we’re always in our heads.”   
  
“Don’t worry,” Hiroto breathes. One good thrust and Kazuya’s breath stutters, knuckles going white where they grip the railing. “I can get you out of your head.”   
  
Despite his promise, it doesn’t fully work. By the end of their session, Kazuya is back in bed, limp and satisfied. He couldn’t use his legs even if he wanted to, his eyes close and sleep comes at last but he’s not out of his head like Hiroto promises. He never is.   
  
For better or worse, his mind always brings him back to the place he doesn’t want to be. All Hiroto does is quieten the nightmares that would have otherwise come but he can’t stop them completely. When his eyes close and sleep takes him away, the nightmares return.   
  
They always do.   
  
\-   
  
Kazuya blinks up at the purple neon lights attached to the feature wall of the clinic. The Sleep Clinic. Recently opened in Roppongi, it’s a new and somewhat strange clinic that expanded from its humble origins in Shanghai. It gained quick popularity and opened three more clinics around China before it finally expanded to Japan with one in Tokyo and another in Osaka.   
  
Rumours were circulating of a future expansion in South Korea.   
  
Yet still, Kazuya remains skeptical even as he looks up at the sign in the lobby of the clinic.   
  
It’s fairly discreet. Only one worker stands near the curtain to the far right wall. The feature wall is painted in a royal dark purple and underneath the neon sign is a bench lined with tablets. Just beside the black curtain is a framed paper with the rules of the clinic printed neatly and clearly for customers to heed.   
  
Kazuya had come here on a whim. A week had passed since the first murder case and examining that body had not been at all pleasant. Putting aside the fact that the body hadn’t been found soon enough to stop rigor mortis and all the other pleasant things that come with decomposition, Kazuya had found signs of abuse. Bruising that must have happened before death around the inner thighs, the midsection and the chest. It wasn’t obvious back in his apartment but now, laid out on the slab, it’s very obvious that there was a fight of some sort before he’d been killed.   
  
Sadly, no traces of any type of bodily fluid belonging to the killer. The body had most definitely been raped and abused but what went into his rectum was not of human origin. Kazuya had nightmares after finding rust. Hiroto went through the evidence found on the scene and concluded it was a broken kitchen pipe that had done that particular job.   
  
The body after that hadn’t been much better. Once again, a person who had no family or friends to speak of - a loner type out in Ginza. Much like their first victim, he too had carvings etched into his back.   
  
_‘NOT ENOUGH’_  
  
 _‘NOT ENOUGH’_  
  
 _‘NOT ENOUGH’_  
  
 _‘WHORE WHORE WHORE’_  
  
 _‘SCREAM BITCH’_   
  
Another man and once the detectives got a whiff of it, they wanted nothing to do with it. Hiroto jumped in of course, he was one of the few who was not only good at his job but also didn’t hold any bias towards supposed prostitutes.   
  
That was another thing that itched at Kazuya. Prostitutes. Everyone assumed they were but there was no evidence to back that up. Kazuya had even gone around asking in the local areas where he knew they hung out and none of them had known the victims. It was a longshot but it hadn’t turned up anything.   
  
Once again, he’d had to examine that body and Hiroto had to be there with him when he discovered that - just like the first body, this too had been sexually abused. No bodily fluids again but he’d been stretched open past the point of tearing with the handle of the toilet plunger they’d found.   
  
Yet despite the gruesomeness of his job and the fact that he dreamt of nothing but death and decay, there was a certain reward in his line of work. A reason why he continued with it at all. Regardless of the brilliant pay and bonus system, there was peace and calm when Kazuya was alone in his lab, looking over a body and discovering how they died. In a morbid sort of way, he acquainted himself with these people, got closer to them as he discovered things about them, analysed every part of them and walked through their final moments with them.   
  
Death, in his case, was a partner. An accomplice. Another cold presence in that laboratory, waiting for him to determine the cause of death and fix them up before he could take their souls away. He imagined their ghosts, asking him to tell their loved ones how they died, let people know about their lives and their last moments. Usually for a court trial of a murderer but sometimes even just so someone in this world knows they existed once.   
  
Like both the murder victims. Maybe they were lonely and maybe they had no friends or family - no one came for him even after they found their bodies. Given the marks of abuse, maybe the only person who did know them was the very person who had murdered them. But Kazuya had known them, what was left of them. Sometimes, that had to be enough.   
  
At the possible cost of his mental health and definitely the cost of his sleep, he stayed with his job.   
  
Two victims killed in the same way with the same markings. No one was saying the words ‘serial killer’ but Kazuya could tell it was in Hiroto’s mind.   
  
Kazuya stares at the soft neon lights and he could have called Hiroto over tonight but the thought of having to endure without him when the man finally got himself a permanent partner makes Kazuya even more eager to find another way. This clinic was popular in China. They hailed it for curing all manner of insomniacs when drugs and natural methods could not. Something had to work here.   
  
He goes to the tablet and after agreeing to the list of rules, he is taken to a screen that asks what gender he wishes to sleep with. The male button leads him to a screen filled with line after line of photos. Faces and names, ages ranging from 18 to the eldest at 72. Sleepers, they call them. Ones who are trained, specialised in the art of sleep - whatever that is.   
  
As Kazuya scrolls through the photos, he wonders how this is going to work when all that has worked so far was a good fucking. They’re not going to fuck him here, sexual activity of any kind is banned here.   
  
Still he scrolls and his finger finally stops when he sees a familiar face. Without a second thought, he clicks on the little icon and is presented with a full profile and an even bigger picture.   
  
_**Jin (4 stars)** _  
  
_Age: 32_  
  
 _Shifts: Night Sleeper_  
  
 _Notes: Moves in sleep. Chatty._  
  
 _Available_   
  
Kazuya stares at the picture. Jin is one of those impossible beauties, the kind that makes people wonder how a human can be so lucky to look the way they do. His eyes are bright, playful and peering out underneath a shower of silk-like black locks. There’s something about his smile too, it’s natural for him and it tells Kazuya that Jin is someone who smiles a lot, who laughs easily. He’s warm and even though this is just a picture, it’s radiating warmth already.   
  
Kazuya hovers over the RESERVE button and hums. The guy does owe him 500 yen anyway.   
  
When he books Jin and pays with his card, a small receipt automatically comes from the little slot on the counter next to the tablet. Kazuya takes the receipt and walks over to the sole worker standing beside the curtain. The worker is a bored looking man around Kazuya’s age, he’s wearing black silk pyjamas with the sleep clinic logo knitted into the left breast pocket.   
  
Kazuya hands him the receipt and he looks over the details before turning and reaching into the shelves he was standing in front of. He hands Kazuya a keycard and a pair of sleep clinic pyjamas wrapped securely in plastic.   
  
“Head through the curtains, sir,” he instructs. “Bathroom is the first door on the left with the lockers. Leave all your belongings in your locker. Sleeper quarters are further on down the hall, find the door with your number.”   
  
Kazuya looks at his keycard, the shiny black plastic glints back at him with golden lettering displaying the number 12.   
  
When he heads through the curtain, he is greeted with a long hallway. There is an opening to the left leading to white tiles which he can only assume is the bathroom. The hallway is a polished wooden flooring and wooden panel walls. Right at the end is the fork that leads down different hallways, all lined with doors to the left and right. The bedrooms of the sleepers.   
  
Kazuya heads into the bathroom and finds it blissfully empty. It’s a large bathroom with lockers to the immediate left of the entrance and baskets filled with extra amenities such as towels, toothbrush sets, soap and moisturiser. Opposite the lockers are the shower cubicles, each one neatly separated with a wall between each one and a curtain upon entering.   
  
As a forensic pathologist, Kazuya is no stranger to hygiene but he opts for the shower anyway. The steaming hot jets hit his skin, pushing him into a relaxed state as he uses their shampoo, conditioner and soap until he’s squeaky clean. He then dries himself, dresses into the pyjamas that fit him like a glove and feel heavenly on his heated skin.   
  
The silk does not cling, but rather gently brushes his skin. It’s similar to the one the man at the entrance wore, only his is a deep maroon in colour with the same sleep clinic emblem on the breast pocket.   
  
He then locks his things away and heads down the hallway to the sleepers. He scans the doors, walking along them until at last he finds the plate for number 12 pinned clearly at the door.   
  
Kazuya still doesn’t know if it’s going to work, in fact if anything, he’s skeptical but still he takes a deep breath as he clicks the card against the door and lets himself in.   
  
The sleeper room is decked out like a hotel room. As small as a two or three star should be but as luxuriously expensive as a five star ought to be. The dim lighting greets Kazuya’s eyes as he registers the small cubby hole to the immediate left of the doorway where extra slippers, towels and pyjamas are neatly tucked away. Right next to that is a frosted glass door leading to a little bathroom.   
  
Kazuya ventures a little further in to see a desk tucked into the right side of the room with a small fridge hidden underneath. There’s a flatscreen TV mounted to the corner of the wall and the north of the room is one enormous window that takes up almost the entire wall. The view of Roppongi is stunning. The buildings below, lights glinting like city stars and when Kazuya walks in far enough, he finally spots the enormous queen sized bed tucked in the left.   
  
It’s higher than most beds and dressed neatly with cushy deep blue duvets. It’s a four poster bed complete with silk curtains at its corners and sitting right at the end is Jin.   
  
Kazuya looks at him, the sleeper dressed in his sleep clinic pyjamas and he’s reminded that Jin is even prettier in person. He might have been distracted last time because he was so tired and grumpy but Jin really is quite beautiful.   
  
In all awkwardness and stunned silence, Kazuya really can only think of one thing to say to him.   
  
“You owe me 500 yen.”   
  
Jin looks confused for a moment, a frown painting his pretty features as he looks over Kazuya and obviously tries to remember how he owes this complete stranger any money.   
  
“I owe a lot of people 500 yen,” he finally confesses. “You’ll need to be a little more specific. Are you my client for the night or a loan shark who snuck your way in for 500 yen?”   
  
Despite himself, Kazuya can’t help but laugh at the idea.   
  
“No one’s getting past that guy at the curtain,” he chuckles. “I’d like to see them try.”   
  
“Ueda? Yeah he’s ripped,” Jin smirks. “Last guy who tried to get past him ended up with a broken arm. I wouldn’t be surprised if someone told me Uepi was yakuza to be honest.”   
  
Kazuya smiles and Jin finally stands up. He’s a little taller than Kazuya, the height difference and the proximity to such alarming beauty makes Kazuya take a wary step back. 500 yen or not, maybe it was a bad idea to book someone he wouldn’t mind having sex with. Especially since the rules of this place clearly forbid it.   
  
“So what’s your deal?” Jin asks, going around Kazuya to lean down and get two bottles of water from the fridge. He hands one to Kazuya and goes to sit back down on the end of the bed.   
  
Kazuya eyes the mini bottle in his hands and raises an eyebrow. “My deal?”   
  
“Well most people who come here are experiencing trouble sleeping,” Jin explains easily. “But everyone is different. Their reasons behind their insomnia are different, the things they’ve tried before coming here are different...even the way they can get to sleep is different. My job is to help you find a way that will work.”   
  
Kazuya thinks about Hiroto fucking him against the cold railing on a chilly night and shivers when he replaces Hiroto’s hard hands with Jin’s. He has to shake that thought out of his head before it gets him kicked out of this place.   
  
“I...don’t really know actually,” he confesses. “I came here on a whim. I’m a forensic pathologist and I’ve had insomnia for years.”   
  
“A forensic what?”   
  
“Pathologist,” Kazuya explains as he gently takes a seat next to Jin. The mattress sinks easily underneath him and he can already tell the bones of his spine are going to thank him if he lies down on this bed. “I study dead bodies and determine the cause of death.”   
  
“So, like a coroner,” Jin nods in understanding. “If you spend every day with dead bodies, no wonder you can’t go to sleep.”   
  
Kazuya shrugs. It might be that, it might not be. The sources of his nightmares are vague and he’s not always convinced it’s death he sees. The one thing he does know, however, is that he can’t keep relying on Hiroto. He’d rather cut that thread himself before it can be cut naturally.   
  
“So what do you normally do to get to sleep? What have you tried already?”   
  
At the question, Kazuya stills. A memory of Hiroto pushing him against a wall, fucking his brains out, being pounded every which way until oblivion swallows him whole makes his cheeks go red before he can answer the question.   
  
“I um...um….”   
  
Jin notices the blush and puts one and one together.   
  
“Oh…”   
  
“Yeah,” Kazuya admits, he clears his throat awkwardly and takes a generous sip of the cold water before he can speak again. “But it only half works. It takes ages to get me to the point where I’m exhausted enough to sleep and even then...I still get nightmares.”   
  
Jin hums. “Well, I can’t do that unfortunately but we can try other things. I’m guessing the sex just exhausts you to the point where your body has no other choice but to shut down, right?”   
  
Kazuya nods and Jin smiles. “It’s a pretty common method. But it takes time to get to that point and the idea is that you get as much sleep as you can - which you can’t do when you’re spending half the night trying to make yourself exhausted. That and by the sounds of it, you can exhaust yourself physically but mentally, you’re still haunted by nightmares so it only half works anyway.”   
  
It’s what Kazuya has been thinking for awhile but it takes all of two minutes for Jin to assess and summarize that into a neat little sentence.   
  
“So what would work?” Kazuya asks. “I’m gonna be honest, I don’t know a hell of a lot about the sleep clinic but I heard it worked in China so…”   
  
“The sleep clinic...the idea is that humans are not meant to be alone,” Jin explains with the ease of someone who knows the science behind this inside and out. Either that or he’s very well trained and watched the training video so many times he’s memorised it. “Humans are getting more and more isolated these days and there’s a thing called ‘touch deprivation’ or ‘touch starvation’. Humans have to touch others, it’s a psychological thing that the founder of the clinic discovered. At the same time, he discovered that listening to certain ASMRs were helping create the illusion of another human in the bed, which helped him sleep faster.”   
  
“Well that’s not going to be my issue,” Kazuya admits dryly. “I’m obviously not touch-starved.”   
  
“Maybe, maybe not,” Jin reasons. “I’m sorry to ask this but...when you’re...you know...is it just sex or do you do other things? Like, is it with a boyfriend? Girlfriend? Stranger? Friend? Do you cuddle, do you spend your days with them or is it just full on sex with the main aim being to make you exhausted?”   
  
Kazuya thinks back to his sessions with Hiroto. Hiroto isn’t exactly a cuddler. Then again, neither is Kazuya. Their sessions had started with alcohol at first and shifted into routine next. Whenever Kazuya calls, Hiroto is only too happy to come over and bang his brains out. He’s never said no and he’s never missed a call but it’s about as cold as a business transaction.   
  
It’s sex. That’s all it’s meant to be. Even when Kazuya passes out, it’s not like he wakes up with Hiroto’s body pressed to his own. They have their own sides of the bed and they stick to it.   
  
“No but I’m not the cuddly type anyway,” he finally admits to Jin. “It would be weird if we cuddled.”   
  
Jin’s eyes are kind but sharp, analysing Kazuya in very much the same way Hiroto analyses a crime scene before he moves into it. For a weak second, Kazuya feels seen, naked before him, all his insecurities on blatant display for the world to see.   
  
“If it’s a loving relationship, that’s one thing but if it’s something else, you might not be exempt from the touch starvation part,” Jin finally observes. “I don’t mean to make assumptions but there’s a massive difference between being touched by someone whose sole purpose is to have sex with you and being touched by someone you care about.”   
  
Kazuya twitches and it’s on the tip of his tongue to defend Hiroto but he can’t. Hiroto isn’t heartless, he does care about Kazuya, but not to the extent that Jin means. Jin means the touch of a lover, a friend, even a family member. Someone who genuinely cares deeply for him and who he cares for in return. If Hiroto were to turn around tomorrow and announce that they couldn’t have sex anymore, Kazuya would only mourn the loss of relief and not the loss of him.   
  
“So...what would work on me, then?”   
  
Jin smiles, an easy stretch of the lips that lights up his entire face. He’s so much warmer when he smiles and it’s the kind of warmth that naturally has Kazuya leaning in like a flower towards sunlight.   
  
“Let’s lie down first. I’ll close the curtains and black out the room.”   
  
At Kazuya’s nod, Jin gets up and starts towards the curtains first. He pulls at the tall material until it perfectly covers the view of the city below. All light is snuffed out at the last inch of curtain and Kazuya blinks as the room is cloaked in complete darkness. He hears Jin shuffle and feels his gentle hand at his wrist, guiding him up onto his feet as another shuffle of blankets is heard at his left.   
  
“I’ll climb in first, so I’m near the wall,” Jin whispers and he sounds so close it almost makes Kazuya jump.   
  
He can hear Jin climbing onto the bed, the slightest shift of sheets and blanket as he moves and when he’s in, Kazuya climbs in after him.   
  
The bed is tall enough that it takes a bit of effort, more than usual, to climb up. Kazuya can feel Jin’s hand pushing the blankets back, allowing him to slide underneath the sheets. Jin then pulls the blankets back over him and they’re heavier than Kazuya is used to. It’s warm but heavy, pressing his body down into the mattress beneath him and the combination of that with the thousand thread count sheets is absolutely heavenly.   
  
“Step one, done,” Jin says from somewhere next to him. Kazuya can’t even see his form on the bed, it’s so dark.   
  
He turns his head to Jin’s general direction anyway and lies flat on his back. “What’s step two?”   
  
“Step two is physical awareness,” Jin explains and his voice is so close, it’s strange to think he’s lying close enough to touch. As it is, Kazuya can feel his body heat under the covers, warming his entire left side even though Jin’s not even pressed up against him.   
  
“Physical awareness?”   
  
“Close your eyes.”   
  
Kazuya can’t see how it would make much of a difference, given that the room is so pitch black he might as well have his eyes closed. Still he does as he’s told and gasps when he feels Jin’s fingers ghosting over his face, as if making sure his eyes are closed.   
  
His body is paralyzed, breath stuttering as Jin’s fingers trail gently down to his chest. He’s not touching him but Kazuya can feel the heat of his fingertips, just barely tracing over the skin of his neck and when he lowers his fingers and touches the silk of his shirt, the heat seeps through. It’s comforting and Kazuya relaxes almost immediately.   
  
“Pull your focus inwards,” Jin says, his voice slow and steady. “Forget everything else, don’t think about anything else and instead focus only on the physical. The feeling of the sheets under your fingers, the blankets pressing you into the mattress.”   
  
Kazuya’s mind is filled only with the thoughts of what he’s feeling physically. Particularly the hand paused on his chest.   
  
Jin flattens his hand gently and Kazuya tries not to let his breath stutter. He tries not to compare them but he can’t help it and the difference is amazing. When Hiroto has sex with him, it’s just sex. Rough hands clutching at skin, spinning Kazuya every which way until he’s fucked halfway to heaven. Hiroto’s hands are hard and calloused, a well-trained cop who likes the practical side of his job and won’t hesitate to get his hands dirty if presented with the opportunity.   
  
Jin’s hands have never held a gun in their life. Kazuya can tell. They’re soft, elegant and very gentle. The way he touches Kazuya, light and always with the window to push him off should it get too personal, is something Hiroto just doesn’t do and it makes all the difference.   
  
Kazuya’s body reacts naturally and automatically. His own hand reaches up until he can feel Jin’s elbow. Jin moves, as if about to jerk his hand away but Kazuya’s grip tightens. A silent assurance that he’s not brushing Jin off, he’s keeping him there.   
  
He can hear Jin’s breathing as clearly as he can hear his own and in the darkness, Kazuya lets his hand slide up Jin’s arm to his shoulder. His fingers feeling the light fabric of Jin’s shirt and the surprisingly hard muscle underneath. Kazuya’s fingers slowly trail down until he reaches Jin’s wrist where his hand is still paused gently on Kazuya’s chest.   
  
Kazuya’s fingers glide over Jin’s and he can’t hear Jin breathing anymore. Impulse drives him to slide his fingers between Jin’s and he’s pleasantly surprised when he feels Jin’s fingers close over his in response.   
  
Jin’s breath is shallow and Kazuya’s head starts to spin, he doesn’t realise his own breathing is sparse as he slowly turns his body closer to Jin’s. He’s aching to feel that warmth closer and with the absence of sight, every other sense is sharpened, his focus completely honed to Jin’s every move and breath.   
  
His other hand comes out when Jin’s close enough, meeting Jin’s shoulder again as the other shuffles just a little closer. He can feel Jin’s breath on his face and tilts his face up in response. The hand that isn’t holding Jin’s, slides down his shoulder, down his side where Jin twitches and his breath falters just a little.   
  
Jin’s other hand finds Kazuya’s chin. Long, elegant fingers sliding up his jaw to hold the side of his face, then further up to hold the back of his head. Kazuya’s fingers grip Jin’s shirt and he’s panting when Jin’s forehead meets his and noses brush together.   
  
Kazuya can’t help himself, he wants more. He tilts his head up and he can feel his lips brushing against Jin but agonizingly not close enough to kiss him. Before he can, Jin inhales sharply and pulls away.   
  
The spell breaks, Kazuya’s eyes open and it’s still pitch dark but Jin’s not near him anymore. Only the mattress and a dent in the spot right next to him where Jin had been.   
  
“I’m sorry.”   
  
“No, I’m sorry,” Jin stammers. “That...that wasn’t meant to happen.”   
  
Kazuya shifts in the bed, his body feels cold without Jin’s touch. For a moment, he doesn’t know what to do but getting up doesn’t occur to him, it’s not an option. His body and mind still wants to be here in this bed with Jin.   
  
“Well...I was right about one thing,” Jin finally says, his voice quiet with a tinge of embarrassed amusement. “You are touch-starved.”   
  
Kazuya’s cheeks would heat in embarrassment if they weren’t already for the incident. He shifts a little in the bed and takes a breath to calm himself down. Jin had activated every nerve in his body with just a touch. Kazuya hadn’t realised how badly he’d wanted to be touched until Jin tried it and now that Jin’s on the other side of the bed, Kazuya misses him.   
  
“So...now that we know that, what now?” Kazuya asks hesitantly, afraid he’ll be told to leave for breaking a rule.   
  
Jin is silent for a moment and Kazuya stares out into the darkness where he knows the other is. Before he can suggest picking another sleeper (because clearly he fucked things up with this one), he hears Jin moving back towards him. Jin’s warmth is back in front of him and before Jin moves any further, his hand touches Kazuya’s shoulder, as though affirming where the other is.   
  
“May I?”   
  
Kazuya nods before he remembers Jin can’t see him. He doesn’t know what he’s agreeing to but he can’t help but trust Jin.   
  
“Yes.”   
  
Jin’s arms slide around Kazuya, one underneath him and the other over his middle. Both Jin’s hands reach Kazuya’s back, pulling them flush together, chest to chest. Jin then hides his face in Kazuya’s shoulder, holding him in a tight embrace with one hand sliding up to hold the back of Kazuya’s head, the other holding his back.   
  
After a moment of short paralyzation, Kazuya’s hands reach around Jin’s body in turn. He holds the other and shivers when he feels Jin’s breath against his neck. It zings down his spine and Jin holds him tighter in response. Kazuya’s fingers are in Jin’s hair, feeling the impossible softness. He smells divine, a soft scent of body soap mixed with very light cologne and aftershave. Not strong enough to offend the senses but not light enough to miss.   
  
Kazuya presses his face into Jin’s neck and his body acts on it’s own as he worms one of his legs between Jin’s until they’re wrapped together underneath the heavy duvet.   
  
His body sings in response, every nerve responding to Jin’s heat, his hands, his body, even his breath. Kazuya accidentally nuzzles his nose against Jin’s neck and feels a rush zip through him when Jin shivers in his hold.   
  
“Are you okay?” Jin asks, his breath warming Kazuya’s neck. “Is this okay?”   
  
“It’s fine,” Kazuya whispers. It’s more than fine, he can’t believe how much he loves this. He doesn’t want Jin to let him go.   
  
“Close your eyes,” Jin says. “Relax into me and focus on my breathing. Don’t think about anything else, just think about what you feel.”   
  
Kazuya never expected it to work. The night is still very young and he’s never fallen asleep so early. But when he pulls his focus in, hones his attention on Jin’s warmth, his breathing, his touch and the way Kazuya’s body so easily molds and relaxes into him, arousal gives way slowly to drowsiness as Jin makes a concentrated effort not to move and arouse either of them further.   
  
It takes about half an hour of quiet breathing but Kazuya doesn’t realise he’s falling asleep in this warmth. All he can feel is Jin and with nothing else, he finally falls asleep.   
  
\-   
  
Hiroto is not a very complicated man. He’s admitted this to Kazuya several times and it took Kazuya years to believe him. After all, as a forensic pathologist, Kazuya is very complicated. His mind in particular, is especially complicated. If one were to find themselves in his mind, they’d have his full sympathies because there is no map available to navigate the murky depths that are his memories, his brain and the way he thinks.   
  
He second-guesses everything. He thinks about everything. He tears things down in order to understand them right down to their fine details. This makes him an excellent pathologist but it also makes him a nervous wreck with insomnia.   
  
But Hiroto is simple. When he’s hungry, he eats. When he’s thirsty, he drinks (beer). When he’s sleepy, he sleeps and when he’s horny, he’ll fuck anything that moves if it’s not his little insomniac friend calling him in the late hours of the night.   
  
Kazuya finds out that this makes him one of the easiest people to read. When Hiroto appears in his lab with a pout on his face, he plops himself on one of Kazuya’s counters and pulls out a little pottle of vanilla ice cream. Normally the pout would be indicative of sulky but the ice cream tells Kazuya that he’s annoyed and even though he doesn’t like Kazuya saying so, the ice cream trait he has is one of the things Kazuya finds absolutely adorable about him.   
  
Hardened police detective sulks with vanilla ice cream. Even Kazuya couldn’t have predicted that.   
  
Kazuya pulls a sheet over the body he was examining and makes a note on the chart. He notices the way Hiroto curls a little on the counter, his rough hands grabbing the tiny plastic spoon as he rips the pottle open but he ignores it for a moment so he can finish his work.   
  
To his credit, Hiroto doesn’t start his whining until Kazuya puts the chart down and turns the lamp near the body off to show he’s finished and can give his attention to him.   
  
“Who pissed you off this time?” Kazuya asks once he’s sure Hiroto has eaten three spoonfuls of ice cream (enough to stave off the brunt of his annoyance.)   
  
“Fucking chief commissioner,” Hiroto mopes, he stabs at the ice cream a little harder with the spoon and scoops it into his pouty mouth again.   
  
Kazuya takes his gloves off and goes to wash his hands. He hums to show he’s listening but really, there’s never anything he can do to help Hiroto with his work problems. They’re in completely different parts of the force. He can be an ear and most of the time, that’s all Hiroto needs. Someone to whinge at.   
  
“Where was it written that bosses can pick drinking nights and we plebs must pause our lives to drink with the lonely bastard?” Hiroto complains. “That prick is the most selfish, egotistical, tyrannical man I’ve ever met, no wonder his wife left him!”   
  
“So to stave off his loneliness and sadness, he’s forcing his officers to come out drinking with him?” Kazuya smirks at him and wipes his hands dry.   
  
Hiroto grimaces. “‘Select few’' was what he said. He said he was only picking out his most competent officers, the ones he considers his ‘buddies’.”   
  
“That’s a good thing isn’t it?” Kazuya shrugs. “Means he considers you good at your job.”   
  
“And my reward is having to suffer his company for god knows how long whilst he gets drunk and inevitably starts crying about how his 20-something third wife left him. Goody,” Hiroto whines and stabs at the ice cream again.   
  
Kazuya has to fight to keep himself from laughing at him. As it is, his lips are starting to twitch. Hiroto might be a grown-ass adult but he doesn’t act like it sometimes.   
  
And then he says the one thing he probably should not have said: “Can I help in any way?”   
  
The smirk on Hiroto’s face makes him wish he could swallow his words.   
  
When the clock strikes 6pm and the official work day ends, Kazuya groans when Hiroto comes back to his lab to take him with him to their night of torture. The bars are alive with Friday night salarymen and businessmen drinking with friends, colleagues and a few unlucky bastards who were dragged out by their bosses.   
  
Kazuya regrets his existence when a tall glass of beer is set in front of him and he finds himself at a large table with policemen he barely knows, the chief of police and a few other select officers. Asslickers was what Hiroto called them and when Kazuya notices them scrambling to fill the chief’s glass, he realises Hiroto wasn’t wrong.   
  
“Kamenashi Kazuya,” the chief grins when he sees their resident pathologist joining them for the night. “How nice of you to join us! If I’d known you were the drinking sort, I’d have invited you to other parties!”   
  
Kazuya resists the urge to shoot a murderous look at Hiroto and politely takes a sip of his beer. “I thought I’d cut loose just this once. My job does often mean I’m in the lab at late hours.”   
  
“With the dead male whores,” another officer mutters under his breath, he moves to take a sip of his drink but when Hiroto smacks him over the back of his head, the drink spills all over the table instead.   
  
“The fuck?!”   
  
“Apologise to him,” Hiroto demands. Kazuya almost wants him to drop it, he doesn’t want to make a fuss but the look in Hiroto’s eyes tells him not to.   
  
The officer gives Kazuya a wary glance and mutters an apology before moving to the other side of the table.   
  
Kazuya sighs and takes another drink from his beer. The sooner he’s wasted, the easier it’ll be to tolerate them. Officers who look down on him are unfortunately common in the station. They’re the ones who can’t imagine why anyone would want to work with the dead and yet they fail to realise that someone has to.   
  
Of course, not all the officers are bad. Lonely chief commissioner aside, some of the guys here are actually good. Hiroto engages in a conversation with Matt. Matt is Tokyo-born but his father was American. African-American, he says to explain away the reason why he’s not white - not that Kazuya ever cared but it matters to Matt to explain it.   
  
Sitting on the other side of Hiroto is Tanizaki. Kazuya has only met him a few times, he’s not one for visiting crime scenes but he seemed nice. If a bit of a pencil pusher, complete with the glasses that are way too big for his face and the absurdly organised desk - right down to the pencils in a neat line.   
  
Beside Kazuya, drinking away his sorrows, is long-time veteran Yaruki. Yaruki had been there longer than anyone, even the commissioner. Rumour was he’d seen it all. Murders, gangs, drugs, everything a policeman could see in his career, he’d apparently seen all of it and more. He had scars on his face, faint and old, his beard was growing some white hairs to match the grey and white on his head and he always looked so tired.   
  
“Yaruki,” Kazuya says once the man resurfaces from his glass. “Nice to see you again.”   
  
Yaruki’s lips twist in a half-smirk, bitter in nature, and he shrugs. “The chief didn’t give us much choice. Apparently his ex-wife is now sleeping with some hot, 30 year old model and chief isn’t too happy about that. If he can’t be happy, none of us can.”   
  
“I heard,” Kazuya mutters with a side-look at the chief in question who, sure enough, is on his third glass already. “Could be worse. You could have my boss.”   
  
This time Yaruki actually chuckles. “Oh no, you drew the short stick on that one. Your boss is damn creepy.”   
  
Kazuya can’t actually disagree. There’s something wrong with a woman who wants to spend her nights alone with the dead even when her hours have long ended. Kazuya never has to worry about any forced drinking nights with her, she likes the dead and Kazuya even once walked in on her singing to a cadaver. He never asked why, she never explained either.   
  
Kazuya feels eyes on him and looks up to see Tanizaki watching him quietly. His big glasses make his eyes look comically large and the smile on his face looks completely unnatural as he slowly lifts his glass in a silent toast. Kazuya frowns but he lifts his glass as well and takes a drink when Tanizaki does.   
  
Yaruki notices the exchange and clicks his tongue. “That boy has no social skills.”   
  
Kazuya keeps drinking. It seems to be what everyone else is doing and by the time the room starts to get just a little bit hazy, he feels the alcohol relaxing him, making him more open to being social with these people.   
  
Eventually the night gets louder and more rowdy with the officers consuming more and more alcohol. Kazuya watches Hiroto, normally loud and rowdy anyway, somehow get more boisterous as the night carries on. The chief bursts into tears at some point in the night, clinging to poor Matt and talking about his ex-wife who left him for a man with a bigger dick.   
  
At around 11pm, Kazuya starts considering going home. It’s still early, these officers are going to drink until the last train is well gone and they’ll sleep in a capsule hotel but Kazuya can’t sleep even in his own bed. He’ll have no chance if he’s in a capsule for the night.   
  
He catches Hiroto’s eye and signals for the door which the other man catches right away with a nod.   
  
“Well, I’m beat,” he announces as Kazuya quietly starts to get up. Hiroto’s announcement buys him time to slip out unnoticed as the chief suddenly leans over to grab Hiroto’s arm.   
  
“Too soon!” he whines. “Stay longer, have a drink, we were thinking of karaoke after this!”   
  
“Boss, I have a 5am start tomorrow that **you** put me on,” Hiroto points out through gritted teeth.   
  
Kazuya yanks his bag out from under Yaruki, who is unconscious with his head on the table. As he fixes his jacket, he feels eyes on him again and looks up to see Tanizaki watching him. Just like before, the man slowly lifts his glass in a silent toast and Kazuya can’t do anything but nod in response.   
  
Tanizaki stares, it’s actually kind of creepy. He stares the whole time he lifts his glass to his lips and takes a small sip.   
  
Kazuya looks away and makes a mental note not to go anywhere near Tanizaki’s desk when he’s in their area.   
  
He makes for the door and slips out as Hiroto gets into an argument with the chief about why he has to leave and Kazuya reminds himself he has to get the guy more ice cream as a thanks.   
  
Outside, the chilly air cuts right through him but he’s glad for it. The buzz and noise of the bar drones down to a bearable hum when the door closes and Kazuya makes his way down the road. It’s still early in the night, there are plenty of other businessmen and women roaming around, bar hopping. Some are even carrying their light-weight colleagues to the next bar to start drinking more.   
  
Kazuya checks the contents of his bag before heading towards the station. As he walks out of the main area and into the quieter streets, the traffic of pedestrians slows to one or two walking the lonely night with him. Kazuya pays it no mind, the occasional car passes but at this time of night, it should be quiet.   
  
He’s almost at the station when he feels a pair of eyes on him. He freezes and turns around but he sees no one. Kazuya frowns. It feels like it did when Tanizaki was looking at him but he can’t see anyone. Just a lamppost, a parked car and an empty street.   
  
Kazuya turns back around, he heads towards the station when he feels it again. He turns around and this time he feels the eyes on him again even though he’s looking and he can’t see anything.   
  
Something’s not right. Kazuya feels a chill slowly rushing up his spine as he starts to feel seriously unsafe here. He turns back around, picking up his pace even as the eyes on his back grow harder and harder. Someone’s watching him, someone’s following him.   
  
Kazuya quickly turns the corner and yelps when he bumps into a hard chest. He stumbles back and when he looks up, he sees Hiroto there and feels a flood of relief rush through him, quickly followed by annoyance.   
  
“What the hell?” Kazuya exclaims, hitting Hiroto’s hard chest with his fist. “Were you following me?!”   
  
“Ow, jesus!” Hiroto whines and rubs at his chest. “I was gonna walk you to the station but you took off so fast!”   
  
Kazuya groans but he’s relieved. It was just Hiroto and not some psycho murderer. “I thought someone was following me, it was creepy. Cough or announce yourself next time you decide to follow me.”   
  
“Noted,” Hiroto laughs and takes Kazuya’s arm. “Come on, let’s get you home safely. It’s the least I can do for dragging you out tonight. Thanks for that by the way.”   
  
Kazuya grumbles but he follows Hiroto to the station and he’s quite glad for the traffic of people around him again. There is safety in numbers after all and an empty street has always been creepy and unsafe for Kazuya. Ever since he started his work as a pathologist, one of the first things he started getting afraid of was empty areas where no one could hear him scream.   
  
“Thanks for walking me here,” he says to Hiroto once they reach the gates. “I can get back on my own.”   
  
Hiroto throws him a meaningful look. “Sure you don’t need me tonight?”   
  
It’s an invitation and Kazuya knows it is but he shakes his head anyway. “I thought I might try out the sleep clinic for awhile, wean myself off you and find a new way to sleep.”   
  
It says a lot about Hiroto that he doesn’t get jealous or put out about the fact that he can’t sleep with Kazuya anymore. Instead he looks surprised and even laughs.   
  
“Sleep Clinic? The one in Roppongi?” he giggles. “I’ve heard a lot about that, are they any good?’   
  
Kazuya shrugs. “I slept.”   
  
“Cool,” Hiroto whistles. “Might check them out myself then. If I ever have trouble sleeping.”   
  
He’ll never have trouble sleeping. Hiroto’s one of those annoying bastards who falls asleep the second his head hits the pillow. He’s never stayed awake thinking about everything and fretting until the sun rises.   
  
Kazuya bids goodnight to him and catches the next train to Roppongi. He’s pleasantly surprised when he gets to the clinic and finds Jin still available. He books him, showers and goes back to his room where Jin is sitting on the end of the bed already.   
  
“Ah, I wondered when I’d be seeing you again,” Jin beams as he sits up straight. He has a contagious smile that lights up his entire face, it’s a joy to see and it makes Kazuya’s cheeks pool with heat at the sight of it.   
  
“I...wanted to see if this could work again,” he admits shyly. “I mean, I slept the other night. Better than I’ve slept in years and faster too.”   
  
“I’m glad,” Jin smiles and pats the space on the bed next to him.   
  
Kazuya slowly sits down and notes that Jin smells nice. Now that he’s closer to him, he can detect a whiff of cologne mixed with whatever shampoo he uses on his hair. Smells like pear.   
  
“So, I wanted to ask you about your job,” Jin says, turning to face him properly. “The pathogoogly thing.”   
  
Kazuya fights the urge not to laugh. “Pathology?”   
  
“That,” Jin nods. “You spend all day examining dead people and that’s probably the root of what’s messing with your sleep. Right?”   
  
Kazuya has to think about it. It could be but at this point, he can’t be 100% sure that’s entirely it. After all, Jin proved in their last session that he is most definitely touch-starved. The memory of Jin’s warm hands traversing his body still makes him shiver and he doubts that it was born from working around the dead.   
  
“I mean...I do have nightmares when I see a particularly gruesome death,” he admits quietly. “But I don’t know if that’s entirely it.”   
  
“Well, why would you choose that as a career?” Jin asks. “I doubt there are a lot of little kids who dream of looking over dead people when they grow up. What made you choose that as a job?”   
  
“I kind of fell into it,” Kazuya admits with a small shrug. “When I was in high school, I was looking for a job and a family friend had an apprenticeship placement open. I didn’t get squeamish with the dead and he was paying well so I took it on. When I graduated, I knew quite a bit about how that particular industry worked so it just made sense to study it in University. Family connections brought me to the police force and their team of pathologists.”   
  
Jin looks a little confused but he also looks like he’s trying to understand why anyone would voluntarily choose to look over dead bodies for a living.   
  
“Do you like your job?”   
  
“Sometimes,” Kazuya nods. “It’s a little hard to explain without coming off creepy but my particular area of expertise is deaths related to a crime. When I’m able to help a case by finding the bastard who murdered the body I’ve examined, it feels like helping someone who couldn’t defend themselves and isn’t alive to tell us the truth. The marks on their bodies, the evidence left on them, has closed many cases.”   
  
Jin nods in understanding and Kazuya picks nervously at his sleeves. “I see things - as you can imagine. People who’ve been abused, murdered. People who’ve killed themselves, rapes, torture...the damage on the human body is often extensive and if the murderer is cruel, the victim would have thought death a salvation. Maybe what I see is messing with my sleep but the truth is, I’m not entirely convinced that’s all of it.”   
  
“What else could it be?” Jin asks and he’s not judging at all, there’s nothing in his tone that says he thinks Kazuya’s weird at all for his career choice. He’s genuinely trying to understand him.   
  
Kazuya thinks about it. The nights when he can’t sleep, the really bad ones when he needs to call in Hiroto to exhaust him, are generally right after a murder. Right after he’s seen a body mutilated, abused, beaten before death finally released the poor soul. Dealing with the aftermath is bad enough but what runs through Kazuya’s mind is not just the sight of the bodies but the thought of what they must have endured before they ever met him.   
  
“Death is a natural part of life,” Kazuya says slowly, his mind working through it as he speaks. “Everyone dies. But what I see is people whose lives were stolen from them. Taken violently by other people. In the lab, I get to know these people. I see the marks on their skin and I know what they’ve been through, I relive their last moments of death with them and I….I can’t feel safe when I know what’s happened to people out there.”   
  
Jin falls silent, his eyes watching Kazuya carefully as Kazuya works through what’s going on in his mind.   
  
“People who should have had someone they could call. People who were alone when they really shouldn’t have been and it was in those moments of vulnerability that some monster came and hurt them. Tortured, raped and killed them. How can I walk outside at night and not feel…”   
  
“So it’s safety,” Jin surmises. He scoots just a little closer and Kazuya feels his body relax when Jin’s body heat reaches his left side. “When you’re...you know...do you feel safe?”   
  
He has to think about that. Hiroto is safe, Kazuya has no doubt about that. If someone were to break into his apartment whilst Hiroto was there, that someone wouldn’t have a chance. Hiroto would protect anyone, not just Kazuya, but he was safe to be around. When he wasn’t there, Kazuya locked the doors, he bolted the windows, he kept everything shut up tight with the curtains drawn.   
  
“I guess I do,” he admits quietly. “But it’s not going to last. We’re not in a relationship and we’re probably never going to be.”   
  
Jin doesn’t ask why and Kazuya’s thankful for it. Instead he scoots a little closer until their arms are pressed against each other. Kazuya turns his head and looks up to see the other is watching him quite intently.   
  
“Do you feel safe with me?” Jin finally asks.   
  
Kazuya has to really think about that. He thinks back to the last night he was here. The way Jin had touched him and eventually wrapped himself around Kazuya and let him cling in return. The feel of Jin’s warmth, his arms holding him, his body shielding him. He’d felt very safe. Maybe even safer than he felt when he was in Hiroto’s arms.   
  
And it’s not because Jin could defend him or anything should someone break in. In fact, he’s not sure Jin could because Jin’s not a hardened cop like Hiroto. But it’s something else, it was a feeling of utter security. Jin had covered him so completely but he’d also warmed him, made sure Kazuya’s senses were filled with him and in that moment, Kazuya had been quite sure nothing in the world would ever hurt him so long as Jin was there.   
  
“Yes,” he finally admits quietly.   
  
Something shifts in Jin’s gaze. It’s just barely subtle but it’s there, enough for Kazuya to feel a twist in his stomach. Nerves, butterflies, strange because he hasn’t felt them in years.   
  
“If it’s about safety, then how do you feel safe?” Kazuya finally asks, he has to tear his gaze away because it’s starting to make his cheeks heat up with nerves. There’s rules in this clinic and one of them is that he can’t touch, he can’t engage in anything with Jin that could be of a sexual nature and the longer Jin looks at him like that, the more his mind wants to go there.   
  
Jin pauses for a moment to think about it. “Cars.”   
  
The answer is so surprising that Kazuya can’t help but look at him again. “Cars?”   
  
“Sleeping in cars makes me feel safe,” Jin explains. “But it has to be a moving car and someone else has to drive it. My guess would be that this stems from childhood when my parents would put me to sleep by driving me around but I can’t remember. All I know is that when I can’t sleep, that works.”   
  
Kazuya stares at him. Something about Jin is so beautifully endearing, he can’t help but just watch. He imagines a little Jin curled in the backseat of the car, sleeping peacefully and something about the image just warms him.   
  
Jin blinks at him and tilts his head. “I can...get my car keys if you’d like?”   
  
“Are you allowed to do that?” Kazuya asks. “I mean, aren’t you meant to put your clients to sleep in the sleep clinic?”   
  
“There are special cases,” Jin explains. “Not everyone is able to sleep in a bed. Not right away anyway. The point of the clinic is to get you to sleep. How you get there...well creativity is allowed. I can put you in my car and drive but you’d just have to sign a waiver that says you’ll adhere to the rules, no sexual contact, all that stuff. Sound good?”   
  
Kazuya is hardly suicidal enough to break that rule when he needs Jin to drive but the sound of being driven around at night with the point being to sleep sounds intriguing. If not a little potentially uncomfortable since he can’t even sleep on planes because sitting up is uncomfortable.   
  
“Okay.”   
  
The guard at the door eyes him warily as he signs the waiver. He’s still dressed in his pyjamas as Jin had explained there was no point in getting dressed unless he planned on staying awake (that and the pyjamas had no pockets, so no chance to break the rule about him not bringing anything with him.)   
  
Jin himself is dressed and looking much like he did the first time Kazuya saw him at the convenience store. A forest green trench coat that falls down to his knees with dark blue jeans, leather boots and a black shirt underneath with the Nirvana band image on the chest. Somehow, he manages to look even more distractingly beautiful and it’s all Kazuya can do not to stare too long.   
  
When everything is signed, Jin takes Kazuya down to the underground parking lot. He shivers the minute the door opens. The pyjamas are just fine in the heated rooms but down here in the cold, with the concrete flooring as well, Kazuya feels the chill cut right through him.   
  
“Ah,” Jin shrugs his coat off and throws it over Kazuya’s shoulders. “My car isn’t far.”   
  
There are more cars parked underground than Kazuya had initially realised. Rows and rows of cars and not a single bare park between them. Granted, the building that the sleep clinic is located in is also an office building but one would think that the offices would be empty this late at night.   
  
“Are all these cars for the sleep clinic?” Kazuya can’t help but ask as he follows Jin. “How many sleepers are there?”   
  
“Well...you saw the tablet,” Jin chuckles. “I don’t know how many there are, I don’t think all of us are on shift in the same night. If that were the case, most of us would be spending the night never getting picked.”   
  
“I thought the sleep clinic was popular?”   
  
“It is and it isn’t,” Jin hums. The sound of his boots clicking on the concrete echoes in the garage area. “The sleep clinic is a niche thing. It was popular in China but Japan takes awhile to warm up to the concept. It’s basically getting in bed with a stranger to sleep, it’s weird.”   
  
Kazuya frowns. “I guess, but you’d think Japan would be all over it. We’re home of the unconventional, there’s places where you can rent a girlfriend for an hour to walk and talk with.”   
  
“Yeah but those are niches too, not everyone goes for them. They’re there for a very particular kind of person - ah here we are.”   
  
The sound of two beeps brings Kazuya’s attention to the car before him. Jin drives an Aqua, the sleek navy blue sheen of the car seems to gleam a little more under the garage lights as Jin opens the boot first and digs out a dark blue mink blanket.   
  
“Would you prefer the passenger seat or the backseat?”   
  
Kazuya looks at the car. Backseat is impersonal, like Jin is a taxi driver and although Jin is technically someone providing a service, the thought of being so impersonal is very unappealing to Kazuya. That and he can’t sleep lying down in a moving car anyway, he’ll get carsick.   
  
“Passenger.”   
  
Jin hands him the blanket and opens the passenger side to let Kazuya in. The inside of the car has the faintest scent of cologne - the same one Jin uses mixed with that new car smell that tells Kazuya the car is new but not brand new. The scent is only just starting to wear off.   
  
He tucks the blanket around himself, relishing slightly in the scent as Jin gets into the car and starts it up.   
  
They don’t say anything, Kazuya can’t think of any small talk to fill the silence as Jin pulls out of the garage and drives up to the road level. As the car smoothly pulls out onto the road, Kazuya sinks into his chair and listens to the hum of the engine and the sight of the city lights passing him by.   
  
“Music?” Jin asks, his voice considerately quiet as his hands smoothly turn the steering wheel.   
  
Kazuya nods and watches as Jin flicks the stereo on and lowers the volume to a dull hum. His hands return to the wheel as he starts driving them out of the Roppongi area and out towards Shinjuku.   
  
“Just relax,” Jin tells him. “Remember what I said about pulling your focus in. Think about the physical side, what you feel, rather than anything else.”   
  
And so Kazuya does. He watches the streetlights passing as Jin drives past, listens to the quiet music playing from the radio and feels himself relaxing. Jin’s scent on the blanket helps and as he pulls it up to his nose, he sinks into the seat and watches the lights.   
  
In the rearview mirror, he can see Jin’s eyes and he finds himself entranced. Jin has gorgeous eyes, long eyelashes that seem to naturally enhance the deep brown of his eyes. They round down to the straight bridge of his nose and Kazuya’s attention is drawn in particular to the little dot next to his left eye. Jin has a lock of hair flicking right over his right eyebrow and he drives on for a few minutes before he obviously feels Kazuya’s gaze and meets his eyes in the mirror.   
  
“You alright?”   
  
Kazuya blinks, as if snapped out of his trance. He looks away to the lights again and swallows hard. When did the car get hot?   
  
“I’m fine.”   
  
He looks down at his lap and feels Jin’s eyes on him for a bit. As he curls up in the blanket, Jin’s hand reaches out to gently pull the blanket up to cover Kazuya properly from the neck down. His hand returns to the wheel and Kazuya has to close his eyes to make this work.   
  
Jin’s job is to put him to sleep but he’s incredibly distracting. All he has to do is breathe and the butterflies in Kazuya’s stomach go mad - which is just what he needed right now. A crush on his own sleeper, he was some sort of masochistic to crush on a guy like this.   
  
“Jin?”   
  
“Hmm?”   
  
“Can you do me a favour?”   
  
He feels Jin’s eyes on him as the car hums along. Kazuya swallows hard before voicing his next masochistic request.   
  
“Can you sing?”   
  
For a few minutes, Jin doesn’t say anything. He just drives silently and for a moment, Kazuya is sure he fucked that up. Jin is going to drive right back to the clinic and ask Kazuya to pick someone else.   
  
But then the radio starts playing a soft song and Jin’s voice croons along with the lyrics, singing as gently as the music but twice as melodic as the original singer. It’s in English and Kazuya can’t understand most of it but Jin’s pronunciation gives away a fluency.   
  
“ _Maybe we should just try To tell ourselves a good lie I didn't mean to make you cry…_ ”   
  
Whether it was his intention or not, his smooth, soft voice does the trick in relaxing every last muscle in Kazuya’s body. He sinks into the chair, finally feeling that elusive tug of drowsiness and sleep as Jin continues singing softly over the hum of the moving car.   
  
“ _And nothing has to change today You didn't mean to say "I love you" I love you and I don't want to…_ ”   
  
Kazuya drifts off to the sound of his singing.   
  
When he wakes up again, it’s to the sound of the car parking. Kazuya’s eyes are drowsy and the blanket is too warm. He keeps his eyes closed, vaguely registering the sound of the driver door closing and the click of boots against concrete.   
  
His side of the car opens and Kazuya fights to go back to sleep even as he feels arms underneath his knees, another supporting his back and lifting him up with ease. Kazuya mumbles, his face nestling in a warm neck as whoever carries him pushes the door closed with his knee and carries Kazuya back.   
  
Cracking an eye open, Kazuya recognises the lift at the bottom of the sleep clinic. He can recognise the scent of Jin’s cologne and closes his eyes again as Jin steps into the lift and carries Kazuya up, back into the sleep clinic.   
  
It’s quiet on their way back, like the sleep clinic ought to be. Jin carries Kazuya back to their room whilst Kazuya drifts in and out, still too drowsy to fully wake himself up. He feels himself being lowered into the bed, the plush mattress welcoming his body as Jin carefully tucks him in, flicks off the light and climbs over him to lie down beside him.   
  
Jin’s arm drapes over his middle, he curls into Kazuya’s side and Kazuya’s far too sleepy to respond or do anything. Besides, after Jin went through all that trouble to put him to sleep, it would be a shame to ruin that work by actively waking up right now. He’s just at the point of drowsy where falling back to sleep is possible.   
  
“Kame,” Jin whispers and for a moment, Kazuya thinks Jin knows he’s awake. But then he keeps talking. “Will you come back?”   
  
He’s so warm and Kazuya doesn’t realise how close he really is until he feels Jin’s chest pressed against his arm. He stops breathing, his heart skips more than a few beats and he feels the butterflies in his stomach kicking up a storm.   
  
“I hope you come back,” Jin whispers.   
  
Kazuya can’t breathe, the thoughts in his brain are firing off so fast he can’t make sense of any of them. It takes all his willpower not to move. But then Jin doesn’t say anything else, his breathing evens out, deepens and when Kazuya’s sure he’s asleep, he finally lets himself breathe.   
  
He can still feel a little sleepiness left. He latches onto it as his hand slowly lifts and takes Jin’s where it’s perched on his abdomen. Kazuya links their fingers and takes a deep breath as he finally falls asleep for the rest of the night.   
  
\-   
  
“Victim number three,” Hiroto hums when Kazuya makes his way into the crime scene. “I know no one wants to say it, but I think we have a serial killer on our hands.”   
  
Kazuya grimaces. The ligature marks on this body were done before the victim had died and the signs of torture more pronounced. Compared to the first body, this one had been tortured a lot more before death finally took him out of his killer’s clutches.   
  
Another loner. A homeless one this time. They’d found his body in the underpass in Shinjuku and it had taken police a good hour to cordon off the area and keep the rubberneckers at bay. Even then, Kazuya could still hear their curious murmurs behind the yellow police tape as he had come in to check the body.   
  
He’d been strangled and the marks on his neck were an angry, violent red but very distinctive in pattern. Rope. The pattern had engraved itself onto the neck with red lines spanning diagonally across the neck.   
  
“Manila rope, I’d say,” Hiroto comments when he sees the marks. He gestures to the wrists. “Looks like this one was tied up too.”   
  
Kazuya checks the ankles and sure enough, the marks are prominent around there too.   
  
“He was tied at the ankles, the hands and the neck,” he hums. “Cause of death might have been strangulation but…”   
  
“But he’s been cut open just like the others,” Hiroto finishes and Kazuya holds back a wince.   
  
There are words on this one, just like the others, scarred all around his back, each word cut with more anger and violence than the last.   
  
_‘NOT GOOD ENOUGH NOT GOOD ENOUGH NOT GOOD ENOUGH’_  
  
 _‘WORTHLESS’_  
  
 _‘WHORE WHORE WHORE’_  
  
 _‘NOT ENOUGH’_   
  
“Enough for what, exactly?” Hiroto mutters as he looks around the underpass. “The scenery is different though. Other two were lucky enough to die in their apartments, this one died in the open.”   
  
“Maybe not,” Kazuya interjects and points to the victim’s side. His left side is bruised, the entire side marked with a deep purple stretching from his neck down to his thigh. “This guy was found lying on his back but the blood pooled at his left side. That’s the side he died on. His clothes are damp but this is the underpass, he would have been sheltered from the rain.”   
  
“Maybe the people who found him touched him? Rolled him onto his back?” another policeman guesses but Kazuya shakes his head.   
  
“Not likely. I won’t rule it out but I think it’s possible that he was just placed here. He might have died somewhere else. I don’t think killing someone in such an open area would have been easy - especially considering the evidence that this guy suffered quite a bit of pain before he was killed. It’s more likely he was killed elsewhere. Somewhere wet.”   
  
“Well it was raining outside so maybe he was killed outside,” Hiroto hums. “But either way, you’re right, odds are that he didn’t die here.”   
  
The police are scanning the area, asking around for witnesses but they’re not coming up with much. Kazuya studies the body before him and can’t help but feel a tug of frustration. He’s going to take this body back to his lab and odds are, he’ll find it as abused as the others had been.   
  
“Our killer is some sort of sexual deviant at best,” he states as he looks up at Hiroto. “I can’t confirm but I’ve got a bad feeling that this one was sexually abused as well.”   
  
“If it’s the same guy, his methods are changing,” Hiroto hums, sharp eyes studying the area around them. “It’s almost as if he’s learning...or trying to find his schtick. Either way, we should hunt this guy down before he gets a real death toll. Won’t hurt to draw up similarities between the victims.”   
  
“All male, all loners, all of them without people to come looking,” Kazuya shrugs and Hiroto shoots him a look. “...what?”   
  
“All pretty,” Hiroto states as if it’s obvious.   
  
Kazuya looks back down at the body. Granted, it’s a dead body and he doesn’t tend to find those particularly attractive. Not to mention this guy has markings all over him, he’s been beaten, bruised and stabbed but there’s still a delicateness to his features. Long lashes, high cheekbones, soft skin that suggests he would have been quite pretty when he was alive.   
  
The others were the same and all of them were quite petite in size. Delicate, small and petite.   
  
“He’s looking for something with these boys,” Hiroto surmises. “Sex maybe but our killer is clever enough not to leave any trace of himself on them. So he’s not sticking his cock in them-”   
  
“What if the killer is female?” Kazuya asks and Hiroto shoots him a weird look.   
  
“It’s...possible. But even then, no fluids, not even a hair. Whoever is behind this is meticulous. But they’ve definitely got a type, small pretty boys with no family and no friends.”   
  
One of the policemen nearby snorts and Kazuya looks up to see it’s the same asshole from the night before who’d commented on his ‘dead friends’. Hiroto notices too and his eyes darken in annoyance.   
  
“Got something to say, Murakami?” he asks, his tone like ice as he straightens his back and glares at Murakami.   
  
Murakami wilts a little. Hiroto is his senior after all, he can pull rank on him and often does. “No sir.”   
  
“No please,” Hiroto snaps. “Share with the class. I’m sure we could use a laugh since we’re near a dead body.”   
  
“Hiroto,” Kazuya begs quietly. “Just drop it, deal with him later.”   
  
Hiroto keeps glaring until Murakami awkwardly goes back to his position. When he does, Hiroto narrows his eyes. “I’m having a talk with you back at the station, officer.”   
  
Kazuya pulls himself up, he tugs at his gloves and takes a deep breath. “I’ll head back,” he announces quietly. “When the body is brought back to my lab, I’ll run an analysis and send the report through as normal.”   
  
“Be careful,” Hiroto says and Kazuya looks at him in surprise.   
  
Hiroto is watching him closely and it takes a moment for the pieces to click in Kazuya’s mind. He glances back at the dead body and then to Hiroto in disbelief.   
  
“You...you’re not seriously suggesting that I’m vulnerable are you?”   
  
Hiroto moves closer, takes his arm and gently pulls him away from the other officers to talk in private. His grip on Kazuya’s elbow is firm but still gentle and Kazuya doesn’t miss the way he looks at him. Genuine concern.   
  
“We have three bodies in a short span of time, I’m not ruling it out. This killer has an MO and you fit the criteria, Kame,” Hiroto mutters, his hand warming on Kazuya’s elbow.   
  
“You’re being ridiculous,” Kazuya says as he gently shrugs his arm out of Hiroto’s grip. “I’ll be fine.”   
  
“I worry.”   
  
“Yeah well, don’t,” Kazuya frowns, a twinge of annoyance gracing his features as he pulls back a bit. “I’ll send the report out to you when I’m done. And don’t be absurd, I’m not in any danger.”   
  
Hiroto doesn’t look convinced and it shakes Kazuya’s confidence just a little as he turns on his heel, grabs his things and heads back to his car. He feels Hiroto’s gaze burning his back all the way out of the underpass and he suddenly wishes Hiroto hadn’t planted that seed of fear in his mind.   
  
He doesn’t sleep that night and at 2 in the morning, he’s back at the clinic and sitting on the bed next to Jin.   
  
“What’s wrong?” the pretty sleeper asks. He’d sensed something was off the second Kazuya walked into the room and went right up to his side. He hadn’t said much, just mumbled his greetings and sat very close to him. Their arms are touching and Kazuya keeps leaning into him.   
  
“I can’t sleep,” Kazuya mumbles, relishing the feel of Jin’s warmth next to him.   
  
“Well yeah, that’s why most people come to the clinic but something else is wrong with you tonight,” Jin can’t help but point out. When he sees the look in Kazuya’s eyes, he quickly adds: “You look like someone who just got some really bad news.”   
  
Kazuya twitches just a bit and averts his eyes.   
  
“There was another body today,” he confesses. “And the sight of it, I just…”   
  
Jin’s hand perches on his back and Kazuya almost jumps at the touch. He looks at the sleeper to find his eyes filled with concern as his hand moves gently up his spine and back down again in a comforting, slow move.   
  
“Is this about the murders on the news?” Jin asks and Kazuya freezes.   
  
He’d seen the reporters but he hadn’t paid attention to the news. In hindsight, he really should have. The police couldn’t make any statements yet and the commissioner was breathing down Hiroto’s neck as well as all the other detectives on the case because a string of similar murders was unusual. He didn’t think...didn’t even consider the fact that of course the media was going to take this one.   
  
“What are they saying?” he asks, looking at Jin warily. “I haven’t been paying attention.”   
  
Jin shoots him a weird look but he picks up the remote and turns on the TV. He flicks the channels until he lands on one station talking about the murders. Kazuya watches as faraway images of the crime scenes appear on the screen, taken at the police line where the media had been cordoned off.   
  
“ _Today marks the third murder in Tokyo. Police have yet to make an official statement but rumours circulating suggest that all three victims of the murders had a lot in common. They were all young, male and socially isolated. The first two victims were found in their apartments but the one found today was out in the open, found in the underpass in Shinjuku - a known homeless area_ ,” the reporter states as the scenes show images taken outside apartment buildings and the homeless in Shinjuku.   
  
Kazuya’s mind is whirring. The police have kept this behind closed doors for a reason - if the public knew that there was a serial killer on the loose, they’d panic. The fact that the media know that the victims are even male and isolated already tells him someone leaked the information.   
  
“Shit,” he mutters under his breath. He turns to Jin. “I-I can’t tell you anything about this, I really can’t. I just examine the bodies-”   
  
“Woah, woah, Kame,” Jin interrupts, his eyes startled at the sight of Kazuya’s oncoming panic attack. “Relax, I’m not pressing for info. The only thing I’m worried about is you.”   
  
That makes Kazuya stop, his eyes widening just a little as his masochistic brain runs that line over and over in his head. He knows what Jin meant, Jin’s main concern is making sure he sleeps - it’s his job. But by now, Kazuya is fairly certain he’s growing a crush on the other so the words are playing in his head like a broken record.   
  
“I...um…” he looks away and resists the heat building in his cheeks. “I’m okay.”   
  
“You’re not actually,” Jin points out. “You say it might not be the case, but I really think your job is what’s interfering with your sleep. Not just your sleep either, it could cut into your mental health.”   
  
The comment is made out of concern but Kazuya can’t help but frown anyway. “So...the solution is I quit my job?”   
  
“I’m not saying that,” Jin points out before Kazuya can rip his head off. “I’m saying that this might be it, this might be what’s causing your sleepless nights.”   
  
“No, what’s causing this one is the idea that the killer might be after someone like me,” Kazuya blurts. He realises, a split second later, that he’s already said too much and his hands fly up to his mouth. “Oh shit, please don’t repeat that.”   
  
Jin looks a little confused but he nods in understanding and shifts a little back on the bed.   
  
“So...you feel unsafe?”   
  
Kazuya closes his eyes. His hands clench a little where they’re perched on his knees but he nods slowly.   
  
“It’s probably nothing,” he comments. “I’m probably not even in danger but some guy I work with said I fit the M.O. and I just….I dunno. I’ve seen enough mutilated bodies in my career to fear that end for myself.”   
  
Jin reaches for his back again and Kazuya feels himself relaxing anyway. He leans a little back into the bed as well and lets out a breath as Jin sits up and slides his other hand around his waist to help him back. He wiggles, squirming back onto the bed with Jin until they’re lying down with their heads on the pillows and Kazuya’s back tucked against Jin’s chest. They’re lying on their sides as Jin reaches over Kazuya’s body to grab the remote and turn the TV off and when the silence hits Kazuya, he shivers a little.   
  
“How would you want to go?” Jin asks, his breath ghosting a little against Kazuya’s neck.   
  
Kazuya looks over his shoulder before flopping his head back down. Not that he’s never thought about this himself, but it’s weird to be asked that. He turns his gaze back up to the ceiling and lets himself relax into the mattress beneath him.   
  
“Painlessly,” he finally says. “Quick if possible. I know there’s no easy way to go but I want to go knowing I have nothing left to do on this earth.”   
  
“There’s always something left to do,” Jin murmurs. His arm is draped over Kazuya’s stomach and the weight is comforting.   
  
Kazuya chuckles a little. “Well...I’d be happy dying knowing I’ve done enough to be satisfied with my life.”   
  
“Your achievements thus far are not enough?” Jin teases and Kazuya can feel his lips stretching where they’re pressed lightly against the back of his neck. “Gotta say, you’re impressive all by yourself. Don’t know many guys your age who are in your position.”   
  
Kazuya feels the urge to tease back. “You’ve forgotten my job title already, haven’t you?”   
  
“Have not!” Jin huffs and cuddles Kazuya a little closer to his chest. “It’s um...coroner but not coroner right?”   
  
Kazuya can’t help himself, he laughs and Jin’s indignant noises only make him laugh harder. Those laughs turn into squeals when Jin’s hands find his stomach and he can practically feel the evil smirk against his neck.   
  
“Ticklish?”   
  
“I will knee you in the balls, Akanishi,” Kazuya threatens but it’s not serious enough because Jin’s fingers are relentless on his sides and it’s all Kazuya can do not to squeal like a little girl. As it is, his feet kick out so hard they end up messing the bed up.   
  
Kazuya ends up on his back and when he looks up and sees Jin hovering over him, his hands on either side of Kazuya’s shoulders, Kazuya pauses. The sudden stillness makes Jin pause as well and for a moment, the two just stare.   
  
Jin’s hair hangs down, slightly curtaining his face and Kazuya has noticed this before but the other really is beautiful. He’s beautiful in that impossible way some people are blessed enough to be. It makes Kazuya’s breath stop in his lungs and when his tongue flicks out to lick his lower lip out of nerves, his stomach flips when Jin’s eyes flit down to his lips.   
  
The air is heavy and in that moment, Kazuya knows what Jin wants. It’s the same thing he wants. Jin is looking at him as though he wants nothing more than to kiss him until his senses are filled with only him.   
  
Jin slowly eases up and Kazuya realises he’d stopped breathing, his stomach is still squirming with butterflies and he has to take a moment to lie there and breathe.   
  
“How are you feeling?” Jin asks and Kazuya takes a moment to think about it before he can answer.   
  
“For a minute there...I forgot what I was scared of,” he admits quietly.   
  
“That’s good,” Jin hums. He climbs off the bed and Kazuya watches as Jin goes to close the curtains of the window until the room is cloaked in pitch blackness.   
  
He listens as Jin patters around the room before climbing back onto the bed. It sinks underneath his weight until he’s down beside Kazuya again. Kazuya can feel his body heat beside him, Jin’s soft breaths warm his ears and his eyes flutter closed when he feels Jin’s arm carefully drape over his middle.   
  
“Did the car help?” Jin asks quietly.   
  
Kazuya nods until he realises it’s dark and Jin can’t see him. “I slept, didn’t I?”   
  
Jin hums, his fingers drum harmlessly on Kazuya’s side and it makes him jump but he doesn’t dare pull away. “I’ve noticed I can put you to sleep, which is good but the point of this is to try and help you to sleep even without me. Which is why I’ve been wondering if your job is the root cause of it.”   
  
“I still don’t think it is,” Kazuya says. “I see horrible things, sure, but...I just don’t think that’s it.”   
  
There’s a moment of silence, during which Kazuya can’t even contemplate sleeping. Jin’s thinking, he can tell because Jin shifts a little until he’s pressed just a little closer under the blankets.   
  
“I’m not asking for information, I’m just asking because I’m worried about you but, is there a serial killer out there?” he finally asks, warm breath against Kazuya’s ear. “Is that why you’re scared?”   
  
Kazuya takes a moment to think it over before he can answer. “I honestly don’t know. Maybe the deaths are connected but...I don’t know.”   
  
Jin’s arm tightens just enough around Kazuya’s waist. Enough to let him know he’s worried.   
  
Kazuya turns onto his side and Jin’s embrace opens enough to let him burrow into his chest. His face hidden away in Jin’s neck as he allows his warmth and scent to engulf him. He feels safe. Safer than he ever had felt in Hiroto’s arms and his stomach twists a little. Just enough that Kazuya can’t ignore the fact that he’s getting seriously attached to Jin.   
  
They lie there in silence, listening to the sound of each others breathing for about ten minutes before Jin finally speaks again.   
  
“What are you doing tomorrow night?”   
  
Kazuya shifts a little and tries to ignore the hopeful jump his heart made at the question.   
  
“Sleeping hopefully.”   
  
“And before that?”   
  
Jin’s hands tighten a little on his body, Kazuya relaxes into him and he takes the bait.   
  
“What did you have in mind?”   
  
He can practically hear and feel the way Jin’s lips curl into a smile. “Let’s have some fun instead.”   
  
\-   
  
There are reporters crammed up against the police station when Kazuya comes in the next morning. He has to go around to get in the back entrance and on his way in, he bumps into an extremely irritated Hiroto.   
  
“Fucking reporters,” he grumbles as he walks in with Kazuya. “I mean I knew it was only a matter of time before they came knocking at our doors but they never make my job easy.”   
  
Kazuya can only nod. He holds his documents to his chest and follows quickly behind Hiroto as the other walks into the main offices. This isn’t usually Kazuya’s scene. Normally he’d be down in the morgue but he had to hand in his findings in person - online is never an option when there’s a security breach and given the fact that the media found out hidden information - there’s a security breach.   
  
“Who the **fuck** blabbed?!” Hiroto bellows when he storms into the main offices. “I’ll get our best analysts in for an internal search and I promise you, the second I find out who sold that information to the media, I will have my foot shoved so far up your sorry asses your GRANDCHILDREN are gonna be limping!”   
  
The officers already seated at their desk have the same deer-in-headlights expressions on their faces. Kazuya doesn’t say anything but he can see why Hiroto is pissed. As the senior in charge of the department, he has to answer for this particular fuck-up and the chief commissioner will not be pleased either.   
  
“Kame, go in there,” Hiroto says in a notably gentler tone. He gestures to the meeting room off the side of the offices. “I’ll be in there in a moment, I need to report to the chief first.”   
  
Kazuya nods and scuttles away before he has to witness Hiroto tearing his detectives a new one. When he opens the door to the meeting room, he sees the long stretch of table in the middle of the room and two people seated already.   
  
Tanizaki looks up from his papers. He pushes his spectacles up the bridge of his nose and fixes a smile on his thin lips. It would probably be a friendly smile on anyone else but on his face it just looks plain creepy. Yaruki is seated on the other side, he nods casually to Kazuya and Kazuya makes a point of sitting next to him instead of Tanizaki.   
  
“Kame,” Yaruki grunts as the door opens again to let in Murakami and a few other officers. “These walls are thin, I heard all of that. Hiroto’s nice and chirpy this morning.”   
  
“The media found out,” Kazuya mutters quietly as he sets his reports out on the table. “Of course he’s irritated.”   
  
“Yeah, heads are gonna roll for that one,” Yaruki hums. “Not every day we get a serial killer though.”   
  
Murakami, who decided he’d rather sit next to Tanizaki than Kazuya, looks annoyed as well. “We don’t know if it’s a serial killer yet,” he corrects the older man. “The media’s gonna spin it, sensationalize it and scare the shit out of the public. They’re gonna make our lives harder and this entire investigation harder-”   
  
“Cool your tits, boy, I outrank you and I’ve seen more cases than you,” Yaruki cuts in with a small raised eyebrow. “I know what happens when the media gets their noses in on an ongoing case. Fact is, everyone’s on edge.”   
  
Murakami glares at him and then turns his eyes on Kazuya. He doesn’t like him either but his glare does soften just a bit - as though he realises Kazuya is in the exact same boat - struggling to solve this crime before the media make it near-impossible.   
  
It’s only a few more minutes before the chief commissioner finally enters with Hiroto behind him. When the door closes, Hiroto takes a seat next to Kazuya as the chief sits at the front and slams his folder down.   
  
“Well this is a shitshow,” the man spits out immediately. “The media know things they shouldn’t know, we have three bodies with similar cases on our files and nothing to show for it. The D.A. is breathing down my neck! If this is a serial killer, I want results and I want them fast!”   
  
Kazuya glances at Hiroto. The man’s jaw is set in a hard line, his eyes are dark and his hands are curled into fists where they’re hidden on his lap under the table.   
  
“Give me answers and give them fast,” the chief demands and turns to Tanizaki. “What exactly do the media know?”   
  
Tanizaki opens one of his folders, adjusts his glasses and clears his throat.   
  
“So far, news reports on all platforms have reported that this is the work of a serial killer. All platforms have reported that the victims were young, male and socially isolated. They also reported on the locations of all victims.”   
  
“That’s not good,” the chief grumbles. “Locations are easy to figure out but the fact that they know the victims are male, young and social hermits is not common knowledge and not something anyone in this department was authorized to disclose.”   
  
He turns to Kazuya and Kazuya feels a shiver down his spine when his eyes are turned to him. It’s easy not to respect this man when he’s drunk and crying about his 20-something ex-wife but right now, acting as the chief commissioner he is, he’s intimidating.   
  
“What can you tell us about the bodies? Were there any differences in their deaths?”   
  
Kazuya looks down at his notes and nods. “The first body was stabbed to death and died of bloodloss. Words were carved into his back after he’d already died. The killer left his body in a small room with the aircon on high heat to speed up decomposition so by the time we found him, he was already in the advanced stages of rotting.”   
  
Some of the officers who had been at the scene of the crime, Hiroto included, wince at the memory.   
  
“The second body,” Kazuya carries on. “He had been stabbed as well but additional marks to the throat, bruises, were found on this one and not on the first. Cause of death for the second victim had been blood-loss as well but this victim had no marks on their hands or arms. The first one did, he struggled. The second one either could not struggle or did not get the time to. Both victims also suffered sexual abuse before their deaths but there were no fluids or DNA of any sort left on the bodies.”   
  
“How is that?” Murakami asks with narrowed eyes. “If the killer raped the bodies, surely there’s something. Even a pubic hair.”   
  
Kazuya takes a deep breath. “Because I don’t believe the killer raped them with his own body. Held them down - sure. But the marks I found inside the bodies are indicative of rape and torture with other means.”   
  
“Like the handle of a toilet plunger or a broom,” Hiroto cuts in helpfully.   
  
Murakami shrinks and the chief nods to Kazuya to get him to continue.   
  
“The third body was different,” Kazuya admits. “Cause of death for this one was also blood loss but he had more marks on his body. The same words were carved into his skin but this one had red marks and bruises on his ankles, wrists and around his neck. Markings were similar to that of manila rope. It’s likely he was strangled and tied up but that wasn’t what killed him.”   
  
The chief hums. “Sexual abuse on this one as well?”   
  
Kazuya nods. “Broken glass found in the rectum this time. The glass was dark green in colour, similar to that of a beer bottle. It’s likely he was sodomized with one and cut open from the inside.”   
  
The men at the table are slightly pale as Kazuya continues. “What this is telling me is that if the same person killed all three men, then he’s possibly evolving.”   
  
“How do you figure?” the chief asks but it’s Hiroto who answers.   
  
“The words found on their bodies indicate our killer is looking for something. There have been rumours that all three men are familiar with prostitution but no evidence to support this theory. However, all three of them were social outcasts with no family or friends to speak of. No one who noticed when they died and no one who knew them to identify them. If the killer is the same person, then he’s looking for something these men did not have but he must have thought they had,” Hiroto explains firmly.   
  
“Given the spacing of the deaths, our killer is methodical enough to pick his victims very carefully. He must have observed them for some time before realising they don’t have anyone they talk to and they don’t have family. Either that or he has some way of finding out through documentation but given the fact that our last body was homeless - I’m going to go with the former theory.”   
  
“Okay, so then answer me this,” the chief says, setting his eyes on Hiroto alone. “Are we dealing with a serial killer?”   
  
Hiroto hesitates. It’s not something anyone wants to admit. Serial killers don’t look good for the police and they scare the public. It’s also not a conclusion to be drawn lightly. But the deaths were similar. If not a serial killer, then it’s a copycat and that’s even more unlikely.   
  
Kazuya watches Hiroto carefully and when Hiroto looks at him, he can only nod slowly.   
  
“All the evidence points to a high probability that the killer is the same person,” Hiroto finally answers. “If so, then yes.”   
  
He doesn’t say it. He doesn’t need to. The chief smacks his hand against the table and swears under his breath.   
  
“Do we have a lead?” he asks, looking around at all the officers now. “Do we have something to go on?”   
  
The room is quiet before Murakami speaks.   
  
“White lilies.”   
  
The chief looks in his direction expectantly whilst Hiroto shoots him a warning glare. Kazuya just looks confused, he hadn’t noticed any lilies.   
  
“Care to elaborate on that, Murakami?” the chief asks.   
  
Murakami spares a slightly worried glance at Hiroto, who is still glaring at him but obviously aware that Murakami can’t stop now that he’s started.   
  
“All three victims were sent lilies,” Murakami explains uneasily. “The first two victims were sent the lilies and had them in their apartments. The third had them in his cardboard spot with the items he owned. All lilies were sent with cards.”   
  
“That’s very important information,” the chief states with a hard glare at Hiroto. “What did the cards say?”   
  
“Nothing,” Hiroto replies whilst gritting his teeth. “They only had a heart drawn in the center.”   
  
The chief narrows his eyes. “And why is it you’ve kept this particular part of the investigation a secret, detective?”   
  
Kazuya looks at him and he knows why. Aside from the fact that Hiroto hadn’t wanted to admit this was likely the work of a serial killer, Hiroto also doesn’t trust many people in his own team. Only a few people ever get to hear his honest opinion on anything, his distrust extends to the chief of police.   
  
“Because,” Hiroto says. “Information like that would be swallowed by the media and they would use that to sensationalize it and turn it into a serial killer story. The less people who knew about that, the better.”   
  
Tanizaki looks up. “Given the fact that none of the news outlets have mentioned lilies, whoever knows about the lilies in this task force are not our leaks.”   
  
“Don’t rule that out so fast,” Hiroto mutters with a wary glance at Murakami. “Whoever talked to the press might have known about the lilies but chose not to talk about it due to the fact that I kept it strictly classified. Any moron would know that leaking the lilies would shorten the list of suspects.”   
  
The chief looks unimpressed but at least appeased by Hiroto’s explanation. He leans back in his chair and takes a deep breath.   
  
“Fine,” he says. “Where did the lilies come from? Any place that sold it to the killer or did he get them from his personal garden?”   
  
“No leads have turned up yet on that but I still have analysts looking into it,” Hiroto says. “I’ll have the report on your desk as soon as I know about it.”   
  
The chief narrows his eyes. “Given that you failed to tell me about the flowers until now, forgive me if I doubt that, detective.”   
  
The room goes quiet and the chief takes a moment to think over the information before finally leaning forwards on his elbows. “So. In summary, it’s likely we’re dealing with a serial killer who targets young, isolated men. He will send them lilies...how soon before their deaths were the lilies sent?”   
  
“Given the way the flowers were wilting, I’d say a day or two before their deaths,” Yaruki comments. “We don’t have enough information to bring up a more exact estimation.”   
  
“Okay, so a day or two before their deaths. If the killer is the same person, his method of killing is evolving...evolving how? Is he becoming more efficient?”   
  
“More violent and likely more efficient,” Hiroto says. “The first victim had a chance to fight back, as evidenced by the wounds on his hands and arms. The second victim didn’t have the chance. The third was tied up. If there’s a fourth, it’s likely we can expect rope burns and possibly more.”   
  
“The third victim would have died faster than the first two,” Kazuya adds.   
  
“If he wanted a quick death, why not just cut their throats or shoot them in the head?” Murakami questions.   
  
“Maybe he’s not after a quick death,” Yaruki points out. “The words on their bodies indicate that he’s after something from them but whatever it is, they didn’t match up. If we find out what the killer is after, it might give us a hint.”   
  
Hiroto sucks in a deep breath and glances at Murakami, who is the next to speak.   
  
“It looks like he might be after sex,” Murakami points out. “It’s true, there may be no evidence pointing to these men being prostitutes but they’ve been sexually abused and the words on their bodies work if you think about an unsatisfied customer.”   
  
The table goes quiet and Hiroto starts rubbing at the bridge of his nose, as if to stave off a migraine.   
  
“Maybe,” he finally concedes. “Maybe. We can’t rule it out but it would harm the investigation to assume that is completely the case.”   
  
“Fine,” the chief huffs. “I want all teams working on loose ends. See if there’s a boutique that might have sent the flowers - it’s a long shot but cross it off the list. Get to work, I don’t want to wait for a fourth victim.”   
  
The room takes the hint as the meeting is dismissed. Kazuya shoots a look at Hiroto before he packs up his folders and starts heading out with the rest of the officers. As he stops at the kitchen to get a glass of water from the water cooler, Hiroto finally wanders in.   
  
“For fucks sake,” the man grumbles as he comes up to lean against the wall near Kazuya. “My head is pounding. Serial killer my ass…”   
  
“Why are you so sure it’s not?” Kazuya asks, he turns to look at him and takes a sip from the styrofoam cup. “And why didn’t you tell me about the lilies?”   
  
Hiroto raises an eyebrow. “As a forensic analyst, would you need to know that?”   
  
“Don’t give me that,” Kazuya snaps, but he’s not as angry as he knows he should be. “You freaked me out last time, you said I fit the M.O. and while we’re on that subject, why didn’t you tell the chief about that? The victims are young, male, isolated but they’re also attractive.”   
  
“Because that information is completely useless to the chief,” Hiroto replies dryly. “The chief and most of the force for that matter, are straight, hardboiled men. They don’t see other men as even remotely attractive. They can acknowledge if someone has good looks, maybe, but they won’t see past that.”   
  
Kazuya hums. As much as it annoys him to admit it, Hiroto is right. The information would have been completely useless to the rest of the team and if anything, there’s a likelihood it would have only outed Hiroto. The police and detectives are there to protect and serve but biases quite often get in the way. One well known one is homophobia, both Kazuya and Hiroto have been very careful to keep their personal lives out of the way.   
  
Especially their sexual history. Friends they are, not one of their coworkers would look upon their history kindly.   
  
Kazuya sighs and pulls a small pottle of vanilla ice cream from his pocket. He hands it to Hiroto who gives him a confused look.   
  
“Ice cream?” he chuckles. “What’s this for?”   
  
“You’re about to have a sucky day,” Kazuya grins and nods to the door where the chief is coming into the kitchen. “Good luck.”   
  
He pushes himself off the counter and heads towards the door as he hears the chief approaching Hiroto.   
  
“You’re on media duty,” the chief says. “Talk to the press.”   
  
“What the fuck?” Hiroto complains. “Why me?!”   
  
Kazuya smiles and heads out quickly before the chief can lug any jobs at him as well. He heads out of the door and down the hallway towards the morgue.   
  
That night, just before Kazuya can clock out of work, he checks his phone and smiles when he sees Jin sent him an address. Just as he’s cleaning up his tools, Hiroto appears in the doorway looking worse for the wear.   
  
Kazuya smiles and rolls the tray away with the tools on top. “Long day?”   
  
“You have no idea,” Hiroto mutters and watches as Kazuya finishes up and reaches for his phone on the bench.   
  
“I was thinking…” Hiroto begins just as Kazuya reaches for his jacket. “We haven’t...you know...in awhile. Got some tension built up since last time, think we could…?”   
  
Kazuya pauses with one arm in his jacket. He hadn’t been expecting that. Usually when they have their trysts, it’s Kazuya who initiates it. This is the first time Hiroto has ever started it.   
  
“Oh,” he pauses and turns to look at Hiroto. “I’m sorry, I have plans. Going out with a friend.”   
  
By the look on Hiroto’s face, it’s clear he hadn’t been expecting that answer. Kazuya sees disappointment in his eyes as well before he hides it well.   
  
“Oh,” he chuckles. “Anything fun?”   
  
“I hope so,” Kazuya shrugs. “He just kind of asked me out last night so...I’ll see what it’s like.”   
  
Hiroto hesitates, like he wants to ask a question but reluctant to do so. After a moment, he looks at Kazuya.   
  
“A friend?” he asks quietly. “Like a friend or…?” he tilts his head and manages an uneasy laugh. “I mean….are you finally weaning yourself off me?”   
  
He laughs but he sounds quite disappointed. But Kazuya doesn’t know exactly what his relationship with Jin is. It seems hopeful and the thought of Jin most certainly puts a flutter in Kazuya’s chest and nerves but their relationship thus far is hindered by the sleep clinic rules. He feels like something is there, but he can’t tell if it’s one-sided or if it’s all in his head.   
  
He hopes not.   
  
“I don’t know but...I met someone,” Kazuya admits quietly. He knows he can see disappointment on Hiroto’s face but he can’t do anything about it.   
  
“Well...that’s great for you,” Hiroto chuckles. “Hope he treats you right. Maybe he can help with your sleeping problem too.”   
  
He turns on his heel and when he leaves, he leaves Kazuya with a weird feeling. Awkward. He makes a note to check in on Hiroto later, maybe fix their relationship to friends - as they always were. But when his phone buzzes again, thoughts of Hiroto fly out of his mind when he sees another message from Jin.   
  
**Jin:** _c u soon <3_   
  
The words make him smile. He finishes pulling on his jacket and grabs his things before heading out. He’ll make it up to Hiroto later.   
  
\-   
  
Being the quiet, introverted being he is, Kazuya had only been to nightclubs twice in his life and both occasions hadn’t exactly been by choice. The first time was because his brother wanted to go clubbing but was stuck with babysitting a 9 year old Kazuya. He snuck the boy in whilst one of his mates sweet-talked the bouncer and left Kazuya at their table with an orange juice to look after their stuff whilst they danced, drank and hit on girls. Kazuya remembered that night quite vividly. The way his little legs didn’t touch the floor because all the tables were really tall - taller than normal tables and the stools were tall too. Kazuya couldn’t climb down by himself.   
  
He remembers drinking the orange juice and watching the confusing sea of bodies dancing, grinding against each other and talking into each other's ears because the music was deafeningly loud.   
  
His brother scored a girl and tried to get Kazuya home without his parents noticing where they’d been. Unfortunately they did notice and Kazuya had never seen his mother that angry before.   
  
The second time was right after he graduated university. A couple of new graduates invited him out without telling him where and what ensued afterwards was Kazuya getting a front row seat to their drunken antics. Serious uni students in his field of study weren’t the kind who had the time to go out during study, nor were they notorious for being able to hold their piss.   
  
Kazuya ended up calling a lot of cabs for a lot of people he didn’t want to have to see again after that night.   
  
But as he enters Strawberry Fields, Jin’s smile makes his stomach squirm with pleasant nerves as the familiar deafening music brings him into the room. There’s a crowd of people dancing, laser lights of all colours shining from the ceiling. The bar counter stretches along the left side, lit in blue with three bartenders on shift. Stairs to the right lead up to the tables and sitting areas, a little darker for privacy no one talks about.   
  
“Kame!” Jin beams as he takes Kazuya’s shoulders and leads him to the stairs. “This way! This way!”   
  
Jin smells of cologne, aftershave and alcohol. It fills Kazuya’s senses as he follows close to Jin so as not to lose him in the crowd.   
  
When they get up to the second floor, he sees the tables spread out in the area and follows as Jin leads him to one particular table that is somehow louder and rowdier than the rest. Kazuya feels the familiar stroke of mild anxiety when meeting a bunch of strangers and instinctively steps a little closer to Jin in response. Jin doesn’t miss a beat and holds Kazuya’s wrist.   
  
“Guys this is Kame!” He announces, introducing Kazuya easily to his friends.   
  
There’s so many of them. Men and women, Japanese and foreign. Kazuya looks at them all and manages the weakest greeting. Apparently it works because the pretty American man at the end of the table calls him adorable and comes right up to guide him to a seat next to him.   
  
“Easy, Jules,” Jin warns lightly in English. “Don’t scare him off.”   
  
“Hi,” the man turns to Kazuya and shines a brilliant smile that reminds Kazuya of those American superstars on billboards. He’s quite pretty, in a model kind of way. The sharp edge of his jaw and cheekbones distantly reminds Kazuya of the Zoolander movie. Blue Steel indeed.   
  
“I’m Julian,” the man introduces himself in Japanese and shakes Kazuya’s hand. “Can I get you a drink?”   
  
Kazuya’s nerves begin to slide away after the first drink. He’s casually introduced to Jin’s friends, each one as loud and boisterous as the next - though Kazuya suspects a lot of that is down to the fact that they’d been drinking long before he’d arrived.   
  
Whilst admittedly a self-confessed introvert, Kazuya had never struggled much to talk to strangers in a group setting like this. Especially with alcohol to help. By the time they’re one hour in, he’s already talking to three of Jin’s friends and they’re fascinating to him.   
  
University students, English teachers, music producers - one of them is even an idol - people from all over the place gathered at this table and they all met Jin at different points of their lives. In a way, it doesn’t surprise Kazuya. Jin is the kind of person who would have not only a lot of friends but also a lot of very different and diverse friends. He’s likeable, he pulls people in like a magnet, Kazuya himself is not immune to the way Jin’s face lights up when he smiles.   
  
The girls at the table in particular, don’t seem immune to him either as they keep sneaking looks at him or going over to talk to him whenever presented the chance. He never leaves his spot though and he keeps plying Kazuya with more drinks whenever he runs out.   
  
“You know, you can go out and dance with one of those girls,” Kazuya points out after the fifth girl asks Jin to dance with her downstairs.   
  
Kazuya feels the distant twist in his stomach of jealousy but he isn’t anything to Jin. At least, he doesn’t think he is. Merely someone who sleeps in the same bed as him in the clinic. One of the many people, like his friends, who just came to like him.   
  
Jin looks surprised for a moment, he glances at the girls and looks back at Kazuya. When he does, his eyes soften considerably.   
  
“Why would I do that when I’ve got you?”   
  
Kazuya feels like he stuck a fork in an outlet and is too shocked to do anything or say anything. Jin’s smile grows wider, reaching his eyes and lighting his entire face and still Kazuya cannot breathe. His hyperactive mind rushes through Jin’s words feverishly, trying to convince himself Jin didn’t mean what Kazuya not-so-secretly hopes he meant but no matter how he twists and turns the words over in his head, he can’t rid himself of the insane hope that Jin is into him.   
  
He doesn’t want to raise his own hopes and see them crashing down. He always tells himself things don’t work out as smoothly as they do and it’s a defense mechanism he learnt when he was really young, not to bring up his hopes, downplay everything to avoid disappointment and hurt. But the more he looks at Jin, the more he can’t help but hope.   
  
Jin hands him another drink and scoots a little closer to him.   
  
The scent of his cologne invades Kazuya’s senses, his warmth heating Kazuya’s side and when Kazuya takes the drink in his hand and glances at Jin, he feels those butterflies in his stomach flitting around incessantly. The alcohol burns his throat and Jin’s entire being is burning him.   
  
Somehow, Jin manages to sweet talk Kazuya into dancing and by this point, Kazuya has actually had enough alcohol to agree to the idea (he would never, ever agree to it whilst sober). The crowd downstairs is thick with people and Kazuya’s hand is warm and nervous in Jin’s grip as he leads him through. The scent of perfume, cologne, sweat and alcohol permeates the air but Kazuya’s hazy gaze is on the back of Jin’s head.   
  
He’s dying to feel those locks between his fingers. He imagines they’d be soft and luxurious and when Jin finally stops and turns around to pull Kazuya into his chest, Kazuya reaches one hand up and sinks his fingers in Jin’s hair at the back of his head. He pulls him in and his eyes flutter when he feels Jin’s hand firmly pressing against the small of his back.   
  
Jin takes the lead. Kazuya forgets they were meant to be dancing, he’s too busy trying to feel Jin’s hair. Jin’s hand helps his hips sway to the music and he’s leaning against Jin completely. Their foreheads touch, Kazuya’s eyes flutter when he feels Jin’s breath against his face and their lips mere inches from each other.   
  
Is this what it feels like to want someone? When he has sex with Hiroto, it’s about release and easing his mind into numbness. But this...every inch of Kazuya’s skin is on fire and he can’t not touch Jin. It would be a crime not to touch him. One of his hands is in Jin’s hair, the other clutching his shoulder as he’s distantly aware of Jin’s grip on his waist and side. Jin is holding him up and Kazuya is letting him.   
  
Then Jin’s lips are pressing against his and Kazuya’s brain shuts down.   
  
How they get back to Kazuya’s apartment is anyone’s guess. It’s not that Kazuya doesn’t remember the drive back, he’s sober enough to remember, but he was distracted. He has very vague memories of hastily giving the taxi driver his address before being thoroughly preoccupied with kissing Jin’s neck and letting his hands wander.   
  
They should have crashed. He knows he would have if the drunk men in his backseat were seconds away from tearing each other's clothes off. It was so unlike him too. Kazuya was always so careful, mindful of his position in a police force full of old-fashioned, homophobic men and women who would shun him at the first chance if they ever learnt what he did when he wasn’t working. With Hiroto, he was always careful, both at work and even away from work. But with Jin, caution was thrown to the wind and Kazuya couldn’t remember wanting anyone so badly.   
  
When the familiarity of his surroundings alert him to being home, he wastes no time in dragging Jin inside. They knock over several things in the entranceway and a couple more things in the living room in their determination to get to the bedroom. In the end, they make it on the floor of the living room and Kazuya’s head narrowly misses a collision with the corner of the kotatsu as Jin wrestles him down to the floor.   
  
Later, perhaps he’ll feel terrible. But with Hiroto as his only constant and recent fuck-buddy, he has little to compare with and he can’t help but compare. His mind flits back and forth even as Jin’s lips kiss and bite down his throat. There are so many differences between Jin and Hiroto that it’s enough to make his head spin. His body reacts very differently to both of them but with Jin, his mind goes too. For someone who thinks so much, he struggles with a single coherent string of thought when Jin’s lips are on his chest.   
  
Jin drags out noises that Kazuya wasn’t even aware he was capable of making. Kazuya’s body opens easily to his every touch and before Kazuya even realises it, his clothes are already off with Jin’s head between his legs.   
  
Kazuya’s back arches, his hands find purchase on the leg of the kotatsu, grasping helplessly at the edge of the table as he tries to gain an ounce of control but Jin won’t let up. One of Jin’s hands is holding his leg up, the other is already inside him and his mouth is insane. The heat travels through Kazuya’s belly, through every nerve ending in his body, making his eyes roll back and he’s damn near drooling. Too close to the edge, his fingers slip against the table with sweat before Jin lets up too early, causing him to gasp and spasm.   
  
“Shh,” Jin whispers, keeping his hands on Kazuya’s legs to keep him down. “Trust me.”   
  
Kazuya wants to whimper, he was way too close to the edge. He feels himself being wrenched back from the edge of insanity and all he wants to do is lose himself but he can’t bring himself to say a single word. His body is still too heated, mind still too scrambled when Jin climbs up until they’re face to face. It’s only then that Kazuya realises he was heaving for breath, his chest rises and falls against Jin’s and his heart is beating too fast when Jin’s hand cradles the side of his face.   
  
Jin’s breath on his face is warm and it’s only when Jin traces his thumb against Kazuya’s temple that he even realises a few tears had leaked from his eyes.   
  
His heart still won’t calm down.   
  
“You’re so beautiful,” Jin whispers and Kazuya reaches a shaky hand up to touch Jin’s face. “How’d I keep my hands off you in that clinic?”   
  
Kazuya’s just wondering the same. He’s too busy watching every line and detail on Jin’s face, he doesn’t realise how distracted he is until the moment Jin slides into him and coherent thought goes out the window.   
  
His back arches, Jin braces him and all he can do is hold on tight. Jin’s pace is insane, he can barely breathe and yet he loves it, his eyes close and all he can do is feel. His body is on fire, his senses are on fire, filled only with Jin’s heat, his scent, the sound of his panting in his ear and Kazuya screams before he even realises his body shaking and shuddering hard in Jin’s arms. The euphoric high is somehow enhanced by the fact that Jin hadn’t let him climax last time and it’s only amplified now. He gasps, fingers tightening in Jin’s back as Jin’s mouth finds his neck, kisses and bites as he relentlessly fucks into him.   
  
Kazuya’s mind goes somewhere else without him even realising it. He can very distantly hear Jin reaching his end but he’s somewhere else entirely. He can only hear himself breathing and it’s a bizarre experience, like he’s floating and it’s not at all unpleasant but somewhere in the back of his head, he’s aware he’s not there anymore with Jin.   
  
Incapable of speech, movement or any sign of life, Kazuya’s mind floats for several moments before he finally comes back and recognises the sound of his breathing and Jin’s. His chest is heaving, almost gasping for air and so is Jin’s. He’s warm, Jin has him wrapped tight in his arms, his lips kissing over his face and hands gently brushing through his hair. Jin’s hair sticks to his forehead with sweat, Kazuya’s never seen anyone so disheveled and yet Jin still looks so beautiful.   
  
When Kazuya looks at him, Jin’s smile is only gentle.   
  
“Wow,” Jin breathes. “I didn’t think you could go there after being only edged once but I was wrong. Are you okay, baby?”   
  
Kazuya’s body is exhausted, pushed well past the brink and his brain is still fuzzy but he nods. He’s fine, tired but fine. “What happened?”   
  
Jin grins. “Should have had a safe word or something. Not that you’d be capable of using it in subspace but I didn’t think you’d go there. Don’t worry though, I’ve got you. You’re not in any danger.”   
  
Kazuya never felt like he was in any danger but he’s only just realising now that he’d been completely incapable of saying or doing anything. Jin could have done anything to him in that moment and Kazuya would have been completely powerless to stop him. It’s the first time in his life he’s completely lost all control over himself and if Jin had been anyone else...even Hiroto...but he feels safe here. Completely safe in Jin’s arms.   
  
His hand, shaky and warm, finds Jin’s and their fingers lace automatically. Jin’s nose nuzzles Kazuya’s temple and Kazuya closes his eyes in bliss. Being tangled together on the floor like this feels right. All of it feels right.   
  
“Stay,” he whispers, hand tightening a little in Jin’s grip as he feels the thralls of sleep trying to take him away. “Stay here.”   
  
Jin doesn’t answer but the kiss on Kazuya’s temple reassures him enough to finally fall asleep.   
  
\-   
  
It scares Kazuya at first, how addicted to Jin he is but he’s quickly reassured when he realises Jin is just as addicted to him. They spend the next week together and whilst they both still have work in the day, not one night passes where they’re not together. Jin moves his sleep clinic shifts to the daytime rounds so he can spend his nights with Kazuya and Kazuya stops working so late so he can come back to Jin earlier.   
  
Hiroto notices the change almost immediately and Kazuya can’t hide it. People used to say the chief commissioner walked around like a thundercloud because he wasn’t getting laid enough, now they were saying their silent little pathologist was getting laid _well_ , it was that obvious.   
  
But of course, whilst Jin was definitely distracting enough to turn Kazuya’s thoughts from almost everything, reality caught up fast and by the second week in, he was staring at the fourth body.   
  
This one is different. Very different.   
  
Kazuya finds himself in a quiet little neighbourhood in Nerima. The kind of quiet where the only noises that pass the apartment houses are the occasional salaryman drunkenly stumbling his way home and maybe a car. People out this way don’t see a murder like this and yet there he is.   
  
He’s hanging. His body hasn’t been left on the ground this time. He’s hanging in the open doorway of his apartment for the world to see. Naked, marked with words cut deep into his skin, tortured within an inch of his life. The police don’t get to hide the lilies now, they’re scattered beneath where his feet hang with a single note planted in the middle. One heart drawn in its center.   
  
“I am _this_ fucking close to...ugh,” Hiroto mutters as Kazuya listens to the police pushing the media and rubberneckers away from the yellow tape surrounding the apartment block.   
  
“I don’t understand,” Kazuya breathes as his eyes look over the body. They can’t cut it down yet, the entire area is such a mess that they just can’t risk losing even a hair of evidence. “The killer’s methods are messy, they’re the signs of an amateur and yet he leaves no trace of himself behind.”   
  
“This guy isn’t like the others,” Hiroto says, scowling at the sight of the lilies. The media will swallow that one whole. “The others were loners, they had no friends, no family, no one who cared and they were all suspected prostitutes. This guy has a wife, two kids and a dog.”   
  
“Where are they?” Kazuya asks, carefully inspecting the cuts hacked into the man’s torso.   
  
“At the station,” Hiroto mumbles grimly. “His son found him this morning like this. Poor kid is going to need therapy for the rest of his natural-born life. The wife said her husband was sent lilies two days ago.”   
  
“These ones?” Kazuya asks, gesturing to the lilies meticulously splayed on the ground beneath his body.   
  
“No, other ones,” Hiroto says and when he looks at the lilies, he narrows his eyes. Kazuya can see his brain whirring for a few seconds before he comes to the same question Kazuya had been wondering about the second he walked in.   
  
“Oh fuck,” Hiroto hisses and pulls his phone out.   
  
He steps away and when he’s gone, Kazuya ignores the other officers wandering around and focuses on the body before him.   
  
There’s anger in every cut. This isn’t the practiced and steady hand of a doctor with a scalpel, these are the hateful, resentful cuts from someone who was looking for something and grew angry when they couldn’t find it in this man. The words are no different, the method is no different but he is different to the others.   
  
It worries Kazuya. If this is the same guy, he’s evolving (or devolving if one thinks about his probable mental state). But if it’s not the same person, it’s a copycat and that’s exactly why they hadn’t wanted too much information out in the media.   
  
Hiroto comes back after a minute or so and approaches Kazuya. “Just got off the phone with the chief. The lilies out in the open like this is too suspicious. We JUST talked about hiding the fact about the lilies to avoid the media blowing it up. It’s almost like the killer is making them look at it, if that’s the case, the bastard somehow has access to our meetings.”   
  
It’s a scary thought but Kazuya had wondered the very same thing when he walked in. “So what do we do?”   
  
Hiroto’s jaw goes hard as he thinks. “We treat this case and every case before it as contaminated. The killer might have access to the files, might have hacked, might even be one of us. Proceed with caution, paper trails only from now on.”   
  
He leaves to tell the others and when he does, Kazuya feels a chill drip down his spine. It’s just as likely that the killer somehow hacked his way into the police files but the thought of him actually being one of them is terrifying. He looks around at the other officers and is distantly reminded he has few friends in the force.   
  
Hiroto would gladly jump in front of a bullet for him but he’d do that for anyone. Yaruki likes him but Yaruki isn’t the kind of guy to hate anyone - too exhausting. Aside from those two, everyone else in the force either doesn’t care, doesn’t know or doesn’t like him.   
  
He suddenly feels incredibly unsafe and when he looks back at the body hanging in front of him. Someone out there is killing men, leaving them open like this. If it’s the same person, it’s a serial killer and Kazuya doesn’t feel safe at all.   
  
It takes hours before he’s finally allowed to leave. He stays in the lab until nightfall, running tests and pouring over previous reports from the other victims. He searches for links, for clues as to what this killer could possibly be looking for but the answers aren’t forthcoming and the obvious answers aren’t satisfying at all.   
  
Any officer can look at these bodies and conclude some sort of sexual play was at work here. The killer had abused them all sexually and he hadn’t found what he was looking for - hence the degrading words carved into their skin. But that didn’t help the police predict who he was going to go after next, nor did it give Kazuya any peace of mind as to the possibility of the killer being one of them.   
  
The news is out by nightfall, this time from Hiroto’s own mouth in an emergency press conference. He remains stone-faced and composed, answering every question and truthfully cautioning the public against the dangers of a possible killer out there. Stay safe, go in groups, always tell people where you are, don’t walk alone and at the first sign of danger - call the police. The usual warning.   
  
That night, when Kazuya goes home, he hides in Jin’s chest and feels Jin’s arms tight around his body - as though the other knows without words that this is hitting him very hard. Thoughts of danger are easy to push away when Jin’s lips press against his forehead and his arms hold him tight and on nights when they’re not frantically ripping each others clothes off, Kazuya falls asleep in peace and warmth when Jin holds him like this.   
  
The media plays the footage over and over, warning the public about a serial killer. They even give the sick bastard a name. “The Lonely Heart Killer” so named because of the heart on the card he sends, the romance of the lilies and the continued rumour that every single victim had sexually solicited him themselves.   
  
There’s victim-shaming too. Of course there is. Kazuya had sniffed it’s oncoming long before it appeared in online forums. Couch-experts asking why the victims willingly got into bed with a killer. Why they hadn’t been safer, why they were prostituting at all and even as Kazuya pours over every detail of the victims - there is not one single shred of evidence that they were prostitutes.   
  
The fourth victim least of all, his family vehemently deny that he had neither the inclination nor time to be a prostitute. He’d been a dedicated family man. None of the three men before him were known prostitutes and they’d asked around, nothing. There was no trace of the killer, nothing to go on, the lilies didn’t lead them anywhere, the cards didn’t either. No prints, no eyewitnesses, absolutely nothing.   
  
Worst of all is the chief. With the DA breathing down his back, wanting someone’s head to roll, he starts putting more and more pressure on his officers - especially Hiroto.   
  
Someone has to answer for this. Someone has to be rolled out before the Japanese public as the killer to put minds at rest.   
  
What disturbs Kazuya most, is that they don’t care if it’s the real killer or not. Assuring the public that they have a handle on it is more important than catching the real killer. Someone has to go up on that stage and be accused as their serial killer before the public lose all faith in their police force. Guilty, innocent, it doesn’t matter.   
  
“He’s a prick,” Hiroto hisses one day when he’s hiding in Kazuya’s lab. “He’s a total fucking prick. The guy wants to kiss ass to the DA, he doesn’t care that finding this bastard is about as easy as finding a needle in a fucking haystack - FUCK!”   
  
He throws his wallet to the wall (just as well it wasn’t his phone) and Kazuya takes a deep breath.   
  
He’s on edge as well, the pressure of the chief isn’t as bad down here but it filters down eventually. After all, it’s his department who can find physical clues - of which there are none.   
  
He picks up Hiroto’s wallet for him and hands it back before coming up to sit on the slab with him.   
  
“Take a deep breath,” he advises and when Hiroto glares at him, he shoves his shoulder. “Don’t give me that look. You’ve eaten all the ice cream in the fridge and the nearby seven eleven, they won’t restock until Monday so take a breath.”   
  
He heaves a deep breath as an example and smiles a bit when Hiroto rolls his eyes but breathes with him.   
  
“Better?”   
  
Hiroto looks like a sulking seven year old being forced to say sorry. “...maybe.”   
  
“The answer is somewhere,” Kazuya assures him. “We’re being careful with our tracks, keeping information concealed and the number of officers who know enough details now can be counted on one hand. If there’s an inside slip up, we’ll find him.”   
  
“I don’t want to wait for a fifth body,” Hiroto grumbles. “We can’t afford to. The media is starting to ask what the hell we’re doing and I don’t blame them. Everyone’s scared.”   
  
Kazuya makes him take another breath and watches Hiroto’s shoulders slump as the stress lessens just a little.   
  
“Kame,” Hiroto mumbles, his dark eyes meeting Kazuya’s. “Do you ever have a really bad feeling in your gut? Like this isn’t going to end well?”   
  
Kazuya rubs his back. “This is the stress talking,” he assures him. “We’ll get through this, we’ll catch the bastard. Just breathe.”   
  
Hiroto shakes his head but before Kazuya can say anything else, Hiroto’s phone starts buzzing in his pocket. He pulls it out and puts it to his ear, answering shortly before the other end makes his eyes widen.   
  
“Be right there.”   
  
He hops off the slab and takes Kazuya’s wrist to pull him onto his feet too.   
  
“What?” Kazuya asks, bewildered as Hiroto leads him out towards the door. “What is it?”   
  
Hiroto doesn’t answer, he leads Kazuya up to the main offices and past the desks. They burst into one of the meeting rooms where Yaruki and Tanizaki are already sitting at the table. Tanizaki has a laptop in front of him, Yaruki hovers behind him and when Kazuya is brought in, Hiroto closes the door behind them.   
  
Tanizaki looks up from the screen. “I found it,” he declares, pushing his spectacles up his nose. “The killer he…” he trails off when he sees Kazuya. An uneasy smile spreads over his face as he waves shyly to him. “Hi Kamenashi…”   
  
“Focus, Tanizaki,” Hiroto demands, clicking his fingers in front of his face. “What did you find?”   
  
“Kid found a goldmine,” Yaruki speaks up where he’s leaning against the wall. “Turns out all our victims had someone to die for.”   
  
Kazuya comes around to see the screen as Tanizaki pulls up four pictures.   
  
“All four victims had these pictures sent to their phones,” Tanizaki explains. “The files had been heavily encrypted, which made recovering them nigh on impossible up until now.”   
  
“All of them had phones? Even the homeless one?” Hiroto asks and Tanizaki nods.   
  
The four victims in the photos are different. The first is a young girl, barely in her twenties with long silky black hair and a thin frame. The second is a man in his late sixties at least, balding head with tufts of grey hair above his ears and a pear shaped body. The third is a woman who looks like she’s been living really rough, her hair is a mess of black and pink dye, draped in rags and oversized coats. The last is a woman in her thirties, neat brown locks tied back in a business-like ponytail, still dressed in a suit.   
  
All four of them are up against a dark brown wall, their hands tied above their heads as though they’re hanging from a hook on the ceiling. All four of them are alive, staring at the camera, gagged with a black cloth around their mouths. Lastly, all four of them have a mini chalkboard hanging from a chain around their necks with the words ‘IT’S EITHER YOU OR ME’ etched in white chalk.   
  
“Okay,” Hiroto whistles as he pats Tanizaki’s shoulder. “Now we’re getting somewhere. I want these people found and rescued if they’re still alive. Trace the whereabouts of the message if you can, analyse every detail of the photo for hints - get to work.”   
  
Yaruki pushes himself off the wall and nods as Tanizaki starts tapping away. Kazuya follows Hiroto out into the hallway and when the door closes, Hiroto turns to him with a sudden serious expression on his face.   
  
“Kame, I need you to brace yourself.”   
  
Kazuya feels that same chill drip down his spine. “For them?”   
  
Hiroto nods. “The killer had his hands on these people and they haven’t surfaced since the bodies were discovered.”   
  
Kazuya takes a deep breath. “You don’t think Tanizaki’s going to find them?”   
  
“Oh he’ll find them. There’s enough hints in those photos,” Hiroto replies. “I just don’t think he’ll find them alive.”   
  
In two days, he’s proven right. They find out everything about these people within the first day and their connection to the victims. The first had been his little sister, the second had been his father. Third one was a friend living on the streets with him and the last had been the mistress he’d been seeing behind his wife’s back. By day two, all four bodies are in Kazuya’s lab having been excavated from shallow graves just outside Yokohama.   
  
Hiroto visits him as he’s examining the bodies and this time he brings Kazuya the ice cream as the other gathers whatever he can from their remains.   
  
“He was kinder to them, that’s a small blessing,” Kazuya notes as he pulls the sheet over the last body. “No evidence of sexual or physical abuse of any sort. All four of them died of broken necks, one quick snap - the killer knew what he was doing.”   
  
“He wasn’t interested in them, he was interested in his victims so that makes sense,” Hiroto shrugs as Kazuya approaches him.   
  
Kazuya washes his hands and jumps up onto the bench to sit beside him. For a moment, the two just sit there, eating ice cream side by side as they look at the four slabs with bodies covered by sheets.   
  
“We’re gonna find him, Hiro,” Kazuya can’t help but assure him. “We’re getting close now, this is a breakthrough.”   
  
Hiroto shakes his head. “Something’s off. I don’t know what but my gut is telling me something’s off about this. Almost like the killer let us find these guys.”   
  
Kazuya looks at him in alarm and frowns. “How can that be?”   
  
“That’s the part I haven’t figured out yet,” Hiroto mutters, visibly annoyed at himself. He turns to Kazuya and watches him worriedly before pulling something from his pocket and handing it to him.   
  
Kazuya checks the little device in his hands and he recognises it immediately. A little tracker, the kind spies use to keep track of their enemies. No bigger than the head of a pin and complete with the adhesive on the other side.   
  
“Hiro-”   
  
“For my peace of mind, Kame,” Hiroto says. “I know you don’t think it but I’m seeing that similarity with you and the victims. If you’re ever in danger, you won’t have time to call me but I’ll know where you are.”   
  
“My privacy,” Kazuya points out with a frown. “I appreciate the fact that you look out for me, Hiro, but you’re not my boyfriend and I don’t need protection.”   
  
Hiroto visibly flinches at the word boyfriend and Kazuya almost takes it back but he can’t. The mere thought of Jin stops him from saying anything else.   
  
“I’m not asking you to do this because I consider myself your boyfriend,” Hiroto assures him calmly. “I’m doing this because I’m an officer who goes with his gut and you, Kame, are ringing a lot of red bells in my head with this case. For my own sake and your own, put the tracker on you and keep it on you, please. When this is all over, I’ll have you take it off and I’ll destroy it myself but right now there is a killer out there. Please.”   
  
It’s the last please and the look in Hiroto’s eyes that makes Kazuya finally agree to it.   
  
When he comes home, Jin - who has been steadily moving himself in - is already in the kitchen making dinner. Kazuya hangs his coat up, takes his shoes off and checks the tracker stuck to the inside of his underwear before coming in and seeing his boyfriend in the kitchen. The heavenly scent of chicken fills the air and Kazuya tilts his head.   
  
“Do you need a hand?”   
  
Jin waves him off. He’s a hot mess with his hair all over the place and his shirt stained with what is probably tomato sauce but the smile on his face is more than reassuring.   
  
“I’ve got this! Prepare to meet chef Akanishi! If I don’t make it as a sleeper, I’ve got a promising career in the culinary arts.”   
  
Kazuya can’t help the rush of fond affection that fills his chest as he comes into the kitchen and wraps his arms around Jin from behind. He rests his cheek on Jin’s shoulder blade, moving every now and then as the other moves around the kitchen to get dinner cooked.   
  
“Good day?” Jin asks hopefully.   
  
“Long day,” Kazuya corrects him and kisses his shoulder. “But we’re getting closer at least, a few more breakthroughs, we might pin down the bastard doing this.”   
  
Jin hums and Kazuya rests his head on Jin’s shoulder to watch what he’s doing. “How was your day?”   
  
“Restless customer today, took him ages to get to sleep,” Jin chuckles. “Nice guy, but got a lot on his mind. He was so thankful I helped him sleep, he even gave me flowers.”   
  
Kazuya grins, he kisses Jin’s neck and watches him curiously. “How did you even get that job? It’s weird.”   
  
Jin shrugs and tosses the last of the vegetables into a bowl. “I had a friend who knew someone...it is a weird job but I don’t mind being paid to sleep.”   
  
Kazuya has to wonder if he’d be cut out for such a job. Probably not. His problem with people getting too close to him would shut that down real fast.   
  
“What are the requirements?” he asks, drumming his fingers idly on Jin’s stomach as he watches the other work. Every now and then Jin leans away from him to get something but he carries on, unbothered. Kazuya reaches a hand up to push Jin’s hair out of his face. “Do they have to be ruggedly handsome?” he teases. “Attractive like hosts with a talent for making people feel at ease?”   
  
Jin laughs. “A lot of my coworkers aren’t attractive - at least I don’t think they are,” he points out as he tosses a few more vegetables into the bowl. “They hire anyone. The only thing you have to be able to do is get your client to sleep.”   
  
Kazuya hums and Jin finally looks over his shoulder. “Thinking of a career change?”   
  
“Don’t sound so hopeful,” Kazuya chides, poking his side as he finally pulls himself off him. “I still like my job - even with its negatives.”   
  
He goes into the living room and pulls his laptop up to review the work he has in his files. Being someone meticulous by nature, he’d detailed and documented every single detail of the bodies he was left to examine. No matter how seemingly benign and irrelevant, he’d detailed absolutely everything. The bodies of the original victims and the bodies of the kidnapped ones who had obviously been taken to taunt the victims, he wrote everything down.   
  
He spends the next hour looking at all their faces, all the notes he’d taken. In every nook and cranny he checks, he sees the same information he can recite in his sleep but still no answers as to what to look out for here.   
  
The killer is organised and definitely has an in on police files. Which means he’s either hacked his way into the system or he’s one of them - Kazuya isn’t sure which one is more terrifying to be honest. Judging by the words left on the victims and the fact that each and every single one of them had been sexually violated, the killer was looking for something that they did not satisfy. He’d killed them in anger, he had to have been with cuts that haphazard and untidy.   
  
Such work would mark the signs of an amateur but the fact that he’s killed eight people and the police are none-the-wiser tells Kazuya this is no amateur. No, this is a killer with a mission and whilst the mission is somewhat clear, it doesn’t help them with finding out anything about him. Where he is, what he’s looking for, who he’s going to attack next.   
  
“Kazu,” Jin sings, he leans over the back of the couch and kisses Kazuya’s cheek. “Come eat and put your work away.”   
  
Kazuya rubs at his temple and does as he’s told. He pulls the laptop down and lets Jin distract him for the rest of the night. A lovely distraction he is, Jin tells him all about the weirdest clients he’s ever had in the sleep clinic. He pours them wine and tells him about the adventures he’s had with the friends he’s made and his life is so different from Kazuya’s. He really is someone who wanted something and went after it regardless of consequences.   
  
Not like Kazuya, who had absolutely needed a plan and a safety net before he could jump into anything.   
  
The irony. Jin had been his safety net should he ever lose Hiroto. Now he had no safety net should Jin leave him and yet Kazuya can’t spare a thought fearing that just yet.   
  
They shower together, Jin brags about how good he is at washing hair but he manages to get half the shampoo bottle in Kazuya’s eyes. When the moon is high, night crawls in and finds them together in bed with Jin curled around him like they were back at the clinic.   
  
Kazuya traces the contours of Jin’s face with his fingers and watches his eyes. He’ll have nightmares tonight, he knows he’s going to have nightmares so long as this killer is out and about but he’s not afraid anymore. He can’t be with Jin here.   
  
“Move in,” he whispers.   
  
A look of confusion flashes across Jin’s eyes. “I thought I already did?”   
  
“No, I mean move in for real,” Kazuya says, his finger tracing down the bridge of Jin’s nose. “I’ll put your name on the documents, give you your own side of the bathroom, move the rest of your things in, make this official.”   
  
A slow, mischievous grin appears on Jin’s face. “I’m messy,” he warns.   
  
“I don’t care, I’ll have you and all your mess,” Kazuya promises with a gentle kiss to his lips. “Stay with me.”   
  
Jin nods and Kazuya pulls him into another kiss. At first it’s lazy and grateful but it soon becomes more passionate, frenzied with hands holding each other close.   
  
Feeling Jin pulling his clothes off is not new to Kazuya but somehow every time they do this, the same nerves shoot up as if it’s the first time. Kazuya’s heartbeat quickens, his breath stammers and stutters for want of air, his hands grasp at every inch of skin he can find. Sometimes he has to pinch himself to remind himself that this beautiful man lying on top of him actually belongs to him.   
  
It seems too unreal and yet when Jin kisses him and holds his face, he can’t think of anything else other than how much he needs him. Scary how fast Jin came about and yet Kazuya will not let him go now.   
  
Jin’s nose nuzzles against his cheek, against his neck, blowing air on his skin and Kazuya shivers. His hands on Jin’s back feel up and down velvet skin. Jin has muscle, well hidden beneath his choice of clothing but undeniably there when Kazuya touches him. It’s hard, toned, well cared for and the reminder that Jin actually has them is more than enough to raise Kazuya’s temperature a few degrees higher.   
  
He can’t think when Jin kisses him, he can’t breathe when Jin touches him but his body craves and starves for want of Jin.   
  
Jin’s so distracting that Kazuya barely notices Jin’s hand fumbling with the lube, he’s too busy staring at his face and being distracted by his kisses to realise it until he feels the stretch of Jin pushing into him and a strangled noise wrenches out of his throat. It’s always a dizzying moment, being entered and yet Kazuya relishes the helplessly lovestruck look on Jin’s face.   
  
Jin’s eyes, normally an innocent honey brown, are dark and Kazuya watches him breathlessly.   
  
“I’m going to edge you tonight,” he warns.   
  
Kazuya feels his breath stop in his lungs but he doesn’t want to stop Jin. The edging will be torturous but Jin’s done it a few times now and Kazuya is addicted. The high he gets from being tortured like that is not one he can return from and his toes curl at the thought of it again.   
  
Jin always paces him, doesn’t do that to him every night for fear he might actually break Kazuya but when he does do it...Kazuya just can’t go back to quick and messy sex anymore. He can’t. He’s hooked on Jin and he’s hooked on this.   
  
Then Jin moves and Kazuya’s mind goes blank.   
  
There’s no controlling the noises he makes when Jin fucks him so hard the headboard makes scratches on the wall. Fast at first and he stops right when Kazuya’s on the edge of no return. He waits for Kazuya to get his breathing back, the torturous feeling of his orgasm being stolen enough for him to whine but then Jin does it again and he clings.   
  
Jin brings him back and forth from the precipice again and again. He flicks Kazuya onto his stomach and keeps his hands down to stop him touching himself (and after the third denial, the temptation is damn near maddening)   
  
By the time Kazuya is near losing his mind, he’s almost drooling on the pillow and begging Jin.   
  
Leaning over his back, Jin kisses his shoulder breathlessly and gently pulls him onto his back again.   
  
“Look at me,” he says.   
  
Kazuya opens his eyes and it’s amazing what Jin’s done to him. He can’t breathe, he can’t remember wanting anything more in his life and even his vision has dimmed, edges darkening until he can only see Jin. His hands cradle Jin’s face and he can only whimper weakly when Jin kisses him.   
  
“Want me to put you out of your misery, baby?” Jin asks, breathless himself. Kazuya doesn’t know how he does it, this has to be just as torturous on him as it is on Kazuya.   
  
He nods and Jin pulls him into another kiss.   
  
Jin goes slowly this time, the noises he makes against Kazuya’s lips are the only indication that he’s suffering and loving this torture. Kazuya has to pull back from the kiss, his head flops on the pillow and his eyes flutter in response. His fingers clench on Jin’s back and he’s so close he could cry.   
  
What comes from him is a scream, much quieter than the ones he’d let out all night but it’s finally bliss. It tears through his entire body, filling his senses and it feels so good he can’t remember ever feeling this good in his life. It takes him away just like it did the first time to a space where only he and Jin exist in this world and Kazuya lets it envelop him.   
  
Subspace, Jin called it. He’s safe here.   
  
When he comes back to earth, Jin is panting in his ear and holding him so close not even air can pass between them. Kazuya’s own chest is heaving too. His arms are weak and shaky as he lifts them and holds Jin to him.   
  
Jin nuzzles him, waits for them to come back down to earth and Kazuya is so weak - he always is when Jin does this to him.   
  
It’s Jin who cleans them up, cleans the bed up, carries Kazuya off so he can change the sheets and then carries Kazuya back onto the bed. He fusses, he kisses Kazuya’s face a million times and all Kazuya can do is smile. He might just love this guy.   
  
They fall asleep wrapped in each other, unaware that this time they were not alone. Someone was listening in.   
  
\-   
  
The next morning, the sunshine filters warmth into the bedroom when Kazuya wakes up. By the time he opens his eyes, Jin is already gone. He yawns as he stretches and looks around in slight confusion. Jin isn’t a morning creature, he’s not usually up before Kazuya but for the time being, Kazuya pays it no mind and gets up. He showers and when he goes to the living room, it’s then that he notices Jin’s bag on the floor.   
  
The bag is slightly open and Kazuya sees something white sticking out, a petal.   
  
Nothing clicks as strange to him until he leans down and opens the bag. Inside are flowers and Kazuya remembers Jin mentioned his day client yesterday gave him flowers as a thank you for helping him sleep. But these flowers are lilies, even worse, they’re wrapped with a baby blue ribbon, a little brown card with a single love heart drawn in the middle - just like the ones found on every single victim thus far.   
  
Kazuya’s heart stops and the thing about fear is that it completely eradicates the ability to think rationally. He could have reached his phone and called for help, he could have called Jin to make sure he knew where he was but he didn’t. The only thing that comes to mind is that Jin has just been kidnapped and he has to find him now, maybe the killer hasn’t gotten far, maybe Jin’s out in the carpark and Kazuya could miss him if he panicked now.   
  
He rushes out, barely paying attention to the fact that he doesn’t have his shoes on. He’s barely out the door before he’s grabbed and a cloth is pressed to his nose.   
  
_Chloroform_ , he thinks frantically before his senses shut down for him.   
  
\-   
  
“Tanizaki, I don’t care if you have a slight case of the sniffles, get your ass in here now,” Hiroto demands that morning.   
  
Since this entire case started, there had been various whispers amongst the police precinct about it. Such gossip is very commonplace amongst hardened officers and it’s nothing Hiroto isn’t already used to but with eight bodies in their morgue, reporters crowded at the entrance and their chief commissioner stomping around like Godzilla because the D.A. are breathing down his neck, a lot of the officers under Hiroto’s command are choosing not to come in.   
  
Murakami had been one of the first to call in - claiming he had a stomach bug. Hiroto smelt bullshit a mile away, the only bug Murakami could possibly catch would be the sexually transmitted kind. Yaruki had been a surprise, the guy isn’t easily scared off by the media so Hiroto was quicker to forgive him for calling in - he’d even sounded annoyed that a flu had knocked him on his ass (his words). But when Tanizaki called in with the fakest sounding cough ever, Hiroto almost shouted himself hoarse on the phone.   
  
He slams the receiver down and grumbles about the useless bunch of wankers he’s unfortunate enough to be in charge of.   
  
Pride of Japan’s police force his hairless ass.   
  
He pulls his phone up and ignores the sight of the chief stomping around the desks. He doesn’t know what that’s going to achieve, other than scaring the new recruits into never coming back to work again. He’s not the chief so he doesn’t know what it’s like having the D.A. demanding results but being an ass about it accomplishes nothing.   
  
Tapping into the tracking app, Hiroto eyes the small dot belonging to Kazuya.   
  
He’d lied just a tiny bit when he said this was about a peace of mind. As a decent man himself, he will remove the tracker and any trace of it once this case is closed but he hadn’t asked Kazuya to wear it simply because of his hunch that something is wrong. His hunch is right, he’s a man who follows gut instincts more than logic most of the time but the tiny part he hadn’t told his little friend was that he wanted to track him to keep an eye out.   
  
Also, because he had feelings for him.   
  
Hiroto curses himself daily. He’d taken his arrangement with Kazuya for granted, he’d never questioned why Kazuya kept calling him over when he couldn’t sleep and he hadn’t thought that would change but when it did, it took him by surprise. He hadn’t thought that Kazuya would go out looking for another way to fall asleep and he hadn’t spared a thought to Kazuya finding a boyfriend and suddenly never calling him over again.   
  
They were friends, but now that was all they were and Hiroto curses himself for not telling Kazuya earlier that actually - he liked their sessions. He liked him, being around him, watching his tiny little quirks that he found absolutely adorable.   
  
Keeping a tracker on Kazuya was absolutely about keeping him safe but it was also Hiroto’s tiniest selfish last wish - to keep him close just a little longer.   
  
He looks at the dot on the app, expecting it to be in the morgue as normal but when it doesn’t go there, all alarms go off in his head immediately.   
  
The tracker is travelling fast out of Tokyo and towards Chiba. Kazuya has absolutely no reason to go there, he has work today and a hard worker like Kazuya doesn’t just jettison off to Chiba without notice.   
  
Just in case, Hiroto shoots a message off to Kazuya’s boss, the matron in charge of the underground labs but when she texts him back, telling him that Kazuya hadn’t called in, Hiroto sends an alert out right away. The dot is speeding for Chiba as Hiroto runs out of his office and calls for backup.   
  
\-   
  
**IT’S EITHER YOU OR ME.**   
  
The sign is around Kazuya’s neck already by the time he wakes up. The aftereffects of the drug still weigh heavy on his mind, fogging his senses even as he opens his eyes and looks around.   
  
He’s been kidnapped, that much he can tell. When his mind catches up and he looks down at the little blackboard on his chest, he realises his picture has already been taken and sent.   
  
He’s in a small room with one window and a door to the left. He can see the docks and the sea just outside and he knows he’s not in Tokyo anymore. Somewhere out on the docks, somewhere near the coast...Chiba?   
  
Rolling his head to the side, he notices the peeling wallpaper on the walls and god knows what this room used to be used for. Judging by the dried blood on the floor, its only use these days is for the killer. This is where the others had died, right here and the thought makes Kazuya’s insides freeze with dread.   
  
Finally the door opens, a man walks in and Kazuya closes his eyes. He can’t look. He can’t see his face. If he sees him, the killer will never let him walk out alive.   
  
“Kame,” a familiar gruff voice speaks. “Open your eyes, you’re not leaving this room alive anyway.”   
  
He knows that voice. Kazuya’s entire body freezes with fear as he recognises the tone and opens his eyes.   
  
Yaruki stands before him dressed in a short sleeved black shirt and black pants. He’s wearing a large dark blue apron and when Kazuya notices the tools he has sitting on a bench, he realises the apron is to stop his clothes being stained with blood.   
  
“Yaruki?” he chokes and strains against the chains keeping him held up to the meat hook dangling from the ceiling. “Tanizaki, I could understand, but you?!”   
  
Yaruki laughs, his eyes crinkling and showing his age. “Tanizaki is a creepy one, isn’t he? But nah, kid’s harmless. Useless too, no way he’d be able to get away with this.”   
  
Kazuya eyes the tools warily. They’re all the tools he’d predicted would make the marks in the victims he examined. Steak knives, paring and bread knives, he even has a cleaver and the same rope Kazuya had found traces of on the other victims. He notices Yaruki’s phone in his pocket and pales.   
  
“Ah yes,” Yaruki says, pulling his phone out to show Kazuya. “Your boyfriend is on his way. Adorable thing he is, he’s good at his job too. Got me to sleep in minutes - I have so much trouble sleeping normally. That’s why I picked him.”   
  
Kazuya glares and pulls uselessly on the chains. “Is that why you chose the others?”   
  
Yaruki just grins. “Well I thought they could give me something,” he explains easily. “Don’t worry, little one, we’ve got time and I know your kind. You pathologists just need to know everything and I’m not cruel enough to let you die in ignorance so let's talk about this - maybe you can figure me out.”   
  
He pulls up a chair and sits down in front of Kazuya. Just far enough that Kazuya can’t kick him if he tried.   
  
Yaruki pulls his hair back and leans back comfortably in his chair.   
  
“What must it be like to get off?”   
  
The question makes Kazuya blink in confusion. “I beg your pardon?”   
  
“Getting off,” Yaruki hums. “Must be nice. Looks nice. All the porn I’ve watched, the faces those people pull - looks like they’re just having the time of their life. A high like no other - not even drugs can make you pull that face.”   
  
“Have you tried heroin?” Kazuya asks, deadpan.   
  
Yaruki laughs, he shakes his head. “I can’t do it, you see. Been on the force so long, seen all those young bucks getting their rocks off with girls at the club when I was young myself. I’ve been laughed at for it too, the girls I paid couldn’t get it up and they laughed.”   
  
Kazuya should feel afraid but the emotion he feels most is disbelief, even annoyance. “You’re kidding,” he chokes. “You’re shitting me. You mean to tell me that the bodies I’ve just spent the last few weeks examining until my eyes cross all died because you can’t get your dick up?”   
  
He finally sees a hint of rage in Yaruki’s eyes and almost recoils.   
  
“It’s not my fault,” Yaruki hisses. He doesn’t get up but his expression tells Kazuya not to say a word more if he doesn’t want to be hurt. “The last prostitute that laughed at me was a boy in his twenties. He’d spent hours sucking it but it didn’t move. But you know what did make it move?”   
  
Kazuya keeps his lips shut and Yaruki continues. “The sight of him choking on his own blood, that was what made my heart race. That was what got it up, I had my first orgasm splashing over his corpse.”   
  
Kazuya glares, he tries not to imagine it, It’s bad enough hearing about it.   
  
“But I don’t want to be that guy,” Yaruki tells him. “I don’t want to be the murderer who kills just to jack off to corpses. So I start looking for what I’m into, specific traits, specific looks. Things that peak my interest and turns out women weren’t on the list. Men were - but specific men.”   
  
Kazuya remembers Hiroto telling him he matched the description because he was pretty. This is one of those times he wishes Hiroto had been wrong for once.   
  
“It still doesn’t work,” Yaruki carries on, his tone getting more annoyed and angry as he thinks back on it. “They had all the things I was looking for, dark hair, beautiful faces, beautiful voices...they didn’t work. They couldn’t make my heart race when they were standing right in front of me, they couldn’t make me hard. They were useless!”   
  
“You’re pathetic,” Kazuya hisses and in his head, he can hear his own voice telling him to shut up.   
  
_Stop talking, stop talking, shut the fuck up, Kame what are you doing?!_   
  
But he’s angry now, he’s annoyed. The mere thought of losing Jin, losing his own life all because some old nutjob like Yaruki wanted to get off - it bordered on insane. There was no logical root to this at all, it was just insane and it infuriated Kazuya that this would be how and why he’d die.   
  
He was a man who worked with his brain. More than that, he suffered from anxiety, he’d imagined a million ways he could die and a million reasons. Of all the reasons he’d envisioned, dying because some lunatic couldn’t get hard was not one of them.   
  
Yaruki fixes him with a glare and picks up one of the paring knives to point at him.   
  
“I called your boyfriend here but I don’t need you alive for this,” he warns. “I really think he could be the one too. The others were missing whatever it is he had, when I picked him as my sleeper, I wasn’t prepared for how he’d make me feel. No wonder you jumped right into bed with him, he’s stunning. I don’t mind an audience when I do it but if you’d rather check out early, be my guest.”   
  
Kazuya eyes the knife, he doesn’t say anything and Yaruki leans forward.   
  
“What does edging feel like?” he asks, making Kazuya’s blood run cold. The man had been listening to them. “The way you scream when he does it, it sounds wonderful. Sounds like a better high than an orgasm. How lucky you are to be able to reach climax like that and feel that. Maybe if he does it with me, I’ll let him live.”   
  
Kazuya glares but before he can say anything else, the door bursts open and his heart drops at the sight of Jin.   
  
Jin had fallen for the trap. He’d received Yaruki’s text with the picture of Kazuya and he’d come running. He’d done just as Yaruki had asked, he’d come alone, he hadn’t called a single person for help. He was alone with him and no one knew they were here.   
  
Just as Yaruki wanted.   
  
“Kazu,” Jin breathes, his eyes turn to Yaruki and he pales as he recognises him. “Oh…”   
  
“Sit,” Yaruki says, getting up so Jin can sit on the vacated seat.   
  
Kazuya shakes his head. Jin does exactly as he wants and when Yaruki closes the door, he makes sure to lock it as Jin sits in front of Kazuya and watches him with large, helpless eyes.   
  
“Did he hurt you?” Jin asks and Kazuya shakes his head but he wants to cry. He’s going to watch Yaruki rape and kill Jin before Yaruki will finally kill him too. Another scenario he’d never imagined.   
  
“Akanishi,” Yaruki says, coming back to grab the rope from the table. He doesn’t tie Jin up yet but Jin doesn’t fight him either. Had he been any less paralyzed with fear, he might have. But as it is, his wide eyes, his shaking body, he’s terrified.   
  
Yaruki smiles at him. “Do you know why you’re here?”   
  
Jin shakes his head and Yaruki takes his chin. “You’re just my type.”   
  
“Hands off,” Kazuya scowls, fighting a little more against his restraints.   
  
Yaruki ignores him, his full attention on Jin’s wide eyes. “I have a task for you,” he tells him. “You’re going to get me hard. You’re going to get me off and if you can do that, I’ll let you live.”   
  
There’s a moment when Kazuya can see confusion in Jin’s eyes, quickly followed by sudden realisation and finally a combination of both fear and disgust.   
  
“What?”   
  
“You heard me,” Yaruki says. “Get to work. I’m not patient and I don’t like killing but I’ll do it if you laugh at me or if you fail your task.”   
  
If their roles were switched and Kazuya was in front of Yaruki like that, he doesn’t know what he’d have done. He knows he’d be frozen with fear like Jin, but not out of fear of what Yaruki can do to him, more out of fear of what Yaruki would do to Jin. He can only watch helplessly as Jin gets up from the chair and hesitantly touches Yaruki’s shoulders.   
  
“Don’t try anything,” Yaruki warns him. “I’m trained, you won’t have a chance hurting me before I get you on the floor.”   
  
Jin spares a look at Kazuya and all Kazuya can do is shake his head. Yaruki may be crazy but he’s also no weakling. Up against someone like Jin, who has had no training in the force, he’s a guaranteed win. He doesn’t want Jin killed over a stupid move.   
  
Yaruki makes the next move, he grabs Jin’s head and pulls him into a hard kiss. Kazuya can only watch and struggle against his chains until they cut into his skin and start streaming blood down his arms. Yaruki gets Jin onto the floor and Kazuya looks up at his wrists.   
  
Then Yaruki yells out in pain and Kazuya looks down in time to see the man pull off Jin and touch his lip where he’s bleeding.   
  
“You bit me,” he hisses. He rams the back of his hand against Jin’s face, the resounding slap echoes in the room and Kazuya winces.   
  
Jin’s protests and screams go unheard as Yaruki decides to forcefully flip Jin onto his stomach. Kazuya starts screaming too, pulling frantically at the chains as he watches Yaruki hold Jin down with one hand and undress him with the other.   
  
“I don’t like to kill,” Yaruki warns as he rips Jin’s pants off and deliberately keeps his head grounded to the floor. “I’m not above rape.”   
  
Jin lashes out, a frantic kick back but it’s enough to almost knock Yaruki off him. Kazuya watches wide eyed and terrified as Yaruki grabs the paring knife again and straddles Jin, pinning him chest down to the floor. He pushes Jin’s shirt up to expose his back and Kazuya screams when he sees the knife.   
  
The second Yaruki starts carving, Jin kicks, he yells and gasps at the unexpected pain. Yaruki is relentless, he’s angrier with every single letter and when he gets halfway, he slams his hand on the fresh wound, making Jin howl.   
  
“All you have to do is fuck me!” Yaruki screams at him. “Worthless whore! All of you! Why do you make me kill you, all I want is that!”   
  
He’s carving a word on Jin’s back and Kazuya can’t see it through his tears but when Yaruki finishes, he throws the paring knife away and pins Jin down to the floor with both hands holding his arms down, his knees holding Jin’s waist down.   
  
He pulls his pants down, Jin’s in no position to fight him off. Yaruki leans over him and Kazuya’s fighting so hard the chains are rattling against the hook, his wrists are bleeding profusely.   
  
That’s when the door bursts open and the first thing Hiroto does is kick Yaruki off Jin.   
  
“Hands up,” Hiroto demands as three other officers rush in. One runs for Kazuya, the other two have their weapons trained at Yaruki.   
  
The officer in front of Kazuya unties him, gently frees him from his chains and the second he falls to the floor and sees Yaruki getting up with his hands behind his head, Kazuya crawls for Jin and turns him onto his side.   
  
Jin’s forehead is bleeding. Yaruki had ground it into the wooden flooring, he looks terrified, disoriented and there are tears on his face but his eyes fill with relief when he sees Kazuya.   
  
“I’m sorry,” he breathes as Kazuya brushes his hair from his face. “I’m sorry, I came when he told me to. He told me not to call for help, he just sent me your picture and I…”   
  
Kazuya hushes him, he pulls Jin into a hug and looks up to see Hiroto smiling at them as the other officers take Yaruki away.   
  
“Come on,” Hiroto says. “I’ve got an ambulance downstairs. It’s over now.”   
  
They both need help getting up again. Their bodies are so shaken up by the ordeal but when Hiroto puts his arm around Kazuya and helps them both out of the room, Kazuya steps out towards the waiting ambulance. He sits next to Jin and lets the nurse fuss over him.   
  
He doesn’t let go of Jin’s hand and Hiroto doesn’t leave either of them alone but it’s not until Kazuya sees Yaruki being forced into a police car and taken away that the reality hits him in the gut.   
  
It’s over.   
  
\-   
  
“Here,” Kazuya says a few weeks later.   
  
He holds his hand out to Hiroto, the tracking device neatly in his palm and for a moment, Hiroto looks confused - as if he’d forgotten it was this tiny device that had saved Kazuya’s life. He takes it back and puts it into his pocket with a small smile.   
  
“How’s Jin?” he asks.   
  
“Recovering, like me,” Kazuya admits with a small smile. “He says to tell you thank you for what you did...and for bugging me like that.”   
  
“Gut instincts,” Hiroto reminds him with a small shrug. “Live by them.”   
  
Kazuya can’t help but smile. He’d only come into the precinct to give the tracker back but he’d been home for weeks now. Both he and Jin needed time to recover from that ordeal. Short as it was, it had been traumatic and no amount of trying to play it down in their minds lessened the damage that day had done to both of them.   
  
Now Kazuya wasn’t the only one with sleeping problems. The only way they could get through it was together and that was exactly what they’d been doing.   
  
Hiroto had been a godsend. After both of them had been discharged from the hospital (one night of observation) they’d been sent home. Trauma, nightmares and anxiety haunted both of them. Kazuya had nightmares of seeing Jin raped and killed before his own eyes, Jin had nightmares of Kazuya being gutted and turned inside out before his eyes. Both of them screamed in the night and both of them clung to each other.   
  
In that time, Hiroto had come around quite regularly. He brought them food, he watched baseball with Kazuya, watched the music channel with Jin. He became a regular face and when they got used to him, Jin’s friends came around too. The nights they had drinking parties in their apartment were the nights neither had nightmares - it was hard to have them when they didn’t sleep.   
  
Normalcy - or at least some form of it - had only come with time and today, Kazuya sent in his resignation and came to give Hiroto the tracker. Jin was at home waiting for him to come home with ice cream.   
  
“Yaruki’s trial is next week,” Hiroto says carefully. “I’ve recorded your testimonial and I’ll appear as your witness but if you want to walk into the courtroom yourself, there’s a seat free.”   
  
“Thanks but no thanks,” Kazuya shivers. “If I can avoid it I will and I’ll only go if my live testimonial will put him behind bars. If he can go to prison without me having to see his face again, that’ll be preferable.”   
  
“Fair enough,” Hiroto shrugs. “I heard you quit this morning too. Where to now, Kame?”   
  
Kazuya shakes his head. He’d thought about it and had a few ideas but nothing concrete. Quitting this morning had been a courtesy but he had so much leave left over. It would buy him time to find a new job.   
  
“Maybe the sleep clinic,” he jokes.   
  
When he comes home (with ice cream) Jin’s arms around his shoulders are the first thing to attack him. Jin sinks against him and pins him to the door.   
  
“Hello,” Kazuya chuckles, he waves the bag of groceries in his hand. “I brought ice cream.”   
  
Jin pulls back, the beautiful smile on his face brightens his entire being as he takes the ice cream from the bag and helps Kazuya bring it to the kitchen.   
  
“How’s Hiroto?” he asks. “Ooh, tell him the Grammys are on next week, he needs to come and watch with us.”   
  
Kazuya hugs him from behind. He rests his head on Jin’s shoulder and watches Jin fiddle with the little plastic spoon the ice cream pottles come with. As Jin starts eating, Kazuya breathes in his scent and feels his entire body relax.   
  
It’s hidden beneath Jin’s shirt but the mark remained. Yaruki had cut deep enough that the scar was never going to go away. Jin has the word ‘ _WHORE_ ’ carved into his back and he can’t handle mirrors for that reason. It’s going to take a lot more than therapy to rid him of how far Yaruki actually did get with him. They’d been saved, but Jin would never forget what it was like to be entered by someone else against his will.   
  
“Let’s go for a drive,” Kazuya suggests, his fingers drumming on Jin’s stomach. “Just you and me, we’ll go when it’s dark.”   
  
Jin leans back into him and Kazuya kisses the back of his neck.   
  
“I’ve been thinking of getting a tattoo,” Jin says, finally putting the pottle down on the bench and resting his hands on Kazuya’s. “On my back. When it’s fully healed. I want to cover it with something.”   
  
Kazuya makes a small humming noise. He laces his fingers with Jin’s and presses another kiss to his neck. “What did you have in mind?”   
  
Jin shrugs. “Still thinking about it. Maybe a turtle.”   
  
Kazuya can’t help but smile a little, he kisses Jin’s neck again and lets the other lean into him. It’s a two-way system the way they work. He needs Jin, but Jin needs him too. They rely on each other and they’ve gotten each other through what seems like endless sleepless nights.   
  
That night they get into the car and Kazuya drives. The city lights pass them by, the city of Tokyo doesn’t sleep but when Kazuya drives past the lights, music playing softly on the radio, Jin falls asleep in the passenger seat. Kazuya pulls a blanket over him and turns left on the highway. He’ll drive an hour longer and take Jin home.   
  
This won’t be forever, he knows. One day they’ll carry on, find a way to live through this. Their nightmares, their anxieties, will fade with Yaruki’s name.   
  
A new future with Jin and soon enough the Yaruki will fade until that impotent psycho is nothing but a blip in their past. They will live happily together and eventually they will sleep through the night without need for aid. They’ll only need each other, it will be enough.   
  
He can’t wait.

**Author's Note:**

> This story is a long time coming but I'm glad it's out. I haven't been able to write since this entire virus began so to finally have this out is catharsis in itself. I know there are few akame fics coming out these days, it happens unfortunately. But I'm sure anyone who got this far down (thank you for reading) might agree with me when I say that ship is not sinking. We'll love them, even if we don't write about them as often.
> 
> Stay safe guys and thank you for reading! I miss all of you!


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